


if the fates allow

by andawaywego



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: But a happy ending!, Christmas Fluff, F/F, Idiots in Love, Rebecca and Dani swap houses, SMUTTY SMUT, Smut, The Holiday AU, Tumblr Prompt, some minor angst, this is just The Holiday, without being exactly the movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:02:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 51,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28306482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andawaywego/pseuds/andawaywego
Summary: Jamie hates Christmas and doesn't believe in love.Dani Clayton might be able to change that.[or: The Holiday AU that's just barely in time for Christmas]
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 152
Kudos: 471





	1. definitely unexpected

**Author's Note:**

> welcome to my The Holiday AU, prompted by the amazing kinda-geek on Tumblr.
> 
> i'm very sorry for any mistakes. i'm seriously rushing to get this out in time and literally JUST finished this chapter. i honestly think i could have kept going too endlessly, but i want it up NOW.
> 
> if you're reading this on Christmas Eve, don't stay up too late! Belsnickel might judge you impish.
> 
> as of now, this is going to be a bit longer than expected, but oh, well. i’ll try to post a new chapter every day until it’s finished. i’m ballparking around 4 chapters right now, but we shall see.
> 
> happy happy holidays, babes. hope you like this!

..

Jamie grows up hating Christmas.

Not the idea of it or the music. Not the movies or the break from school and not even the food or the letters to Santa. It’s the day she hates. The twenty-fifth of December, when kids up and down her block woke up to presents and hot chocolate, to parents who hugged them and watched happily as they unwrapped everything they’d asked Santa for.

Practical, self-reliant Jamie hates Christmas because it reminds her of how she got to be the way she is. Her parents spent so much of their time apart and couldn’t usually be bothered to remember when Christmas was. Three years in a row, her mother bought her and Denny a single pair of socks each and nothing more. On her last Christmas with them before leaving Jamie and baby Mikey at a grocery store _alone_ , she’d given the pair of them keychains she’d gotten free from the doctor’s office and she hadn’t even wrapped them.

After that, the only presents Jamie gets for Christmas are ones she gets herself or—before she’s free of the foster care system and has a job and a flat of her own—that she _makes_ for herself.

And she knows it sounds ridiculous and selfish. She knows that it might sound greedy, even—as if all she cares for are presents and recognition during the holiday season.

But here’s the thing: what she really hates is getting her hopes up only to have them dashed against the rocks overlooking a tumultuous, briny sea of bitter disappointment.

And she would like to tell you that, no, she is not being dramatic.

She grows up hating promises, hating disillusionment. She avoids shops in the last few weeks of December and happily owns no Christmas ornaments of her own. 

Jamie doesn’t believe in Santa Claus or fairy tales or magic.

Sometimes, she doesn’t even believe in love.

( _but she’s wrong—she’s_ **_wrong_ ** _—and she finds out that out the hard way_ )

_________

Danielle Clayton makes the very first rash decision of her entire life exactly eight days before her twenty-fifth Christmas.

She’s still riding the low of all this _Edmund_ business and dodging her mother’s shrill-voiced interrogations left via voicemail when she does it. Most of her life has been planned out for a very long time—she has a calendar that she follows very strictly so as to keep herself organized—but for all the good it’s done her, living her life by the word _yes_ has finally caught up with her, so she decides she needs an _out_.

In fact, she’s certain she’s _earned_ one given the impossibly thick tension she’s been choking on for the last two months of the year. The aftermath of her very first _no_ —said haltingly and quite without air to a kneeling Edmund in the middle of a crowded restaurant—becomes more than she’s willing to bear any longer.

So she cancels her holiday plans with her mother, bites her tongue whenever an apology bubbles up in her throat, and lists her house on a sort of international Airbnb website for Christmas.

She tells no one for two reasons:

  1. She has no idea if anyone will even be interested in doing a home exchange with her so last minute.
  2. There is no one to tell.



_________

If anyone ever asked—and, thankfully, no one ever bothers—Jamie would probably say that her life is turning out to be a lot like she expected. She would say that this is not a good thing. By twenty-four, she is living in a small, country village _alone_ above a pub and spending most of her days fighting to keep the nicest home in the county from falling into disrepair. The work is honest and her employer nice enough—her colleagues are, in fact, some of the only friends she’s ever known.

But there is something missing and she knows what it is without ever letting herself acknowledge it.

The worst part of the whole thing is watching the people she cares about find it with one another—Peter and Rebecca then, much later, Owen and Hannah. They lean on one another far more seriously than they can ever lean on her and Jamie knows it's because she lives her life with one foot out the door.

She’s trying to be better about it. Really, she is. But it’s hard. Impossible, really.

There are so few things worth _staying_ for.

Needless to say, it is somewhat of a reassurance when everything _Peter_ hits the fan at top speed, spattering splintered pieces over anyone within the splash zone. Jamie reprimands herself more than once for feeling _validated_ about the whole thing when Rebecca turns to her for comfort. Having grown used to being the only one standing outside the inner circle, it feels special to have someone else at her side for once.

That isn’t to say she isn’t a good friend.

She _is._ Really, she is.

When Peter runs off with a good chunk of Henry’s money, Rebecca collapses neatly into Jamie’s arms like they’re living their lives in some film about teen drama. Jamie gives Rebecca tissues to sniffle and cry into. She watches terrible romantic comedies in the dark living room of the manor, spooning ice cream into her mouth as some kind of consolation prize. Rebecca rants about Peter and Jamie listens, offers what she hopes are comforting words in response to each of his listed faults.

Importantly, she resists the urge to say, _I told you so_ , which is one of the greatest tests of strength Jamie has ever endured.

She spends months cleaning up the mess Peter left behind and finds herself slotting into a place between the people she shares her life with. A place that she’s certain hadn’t existed before, or else that she had to reshape herself to slide inside. And it’s comforting, yes, but terrifying all the same. 

Some part of her wants to melt into them, open herself completely to whatever is going to come next, but the rest of her is too scared to do anything of the sort.

Little by little, she’s done what she can. She’s let Rebecca in, let in Owen and Hannah. Even Flora and Miles are surprisingly easy to take a shine, too, and the craziest part of the whole thing is that she can’t help but like them back. _Let_ herself get a little attached. A lot familiar.

This isn’t to say that she believes in love as anything that could possibly _ever_ last forever, so she cares as she can—standing on her own, leaning against no one, because this is what she knows.

_________

On the last day of school before the holiday break, Dani gets a message on the home-exchange site and reads it on her lunch break.

 _I know it’s very last minute,_ the message reads, _but I was wondering if you would still be interested in a swap for the holidays? I find myself in desperate need of some “away time.”_

Dani knows the feeling. It bubbles giddily in her chest. She answers a little too quickly, and then goes to the sender’s profile, surveying it while she waits. 

The woman— _Rebecca Jessel_ , as her personal information section reads—does not have a home of her own listed, but she does have a section that says where she’s from. Dani eyes _Bly, Colchester, UK_ nervously, biting her lip a little too hard as she quickly googles the village.

It’s green and beautiful. Cobblestone houses and a picture of a river with boats lining the side. Given that it’s December, it’s probably safe to assume that the grass and trees are a little browner than they are in most photographs, but Dani falls so immediately in love with it that she can hardly be bothered to care.

Rebecca must be truly as eager as Dani is because her answer comes less than five minutes after Dani sends her own. She compliments the photos of Dani’s home. Says something about never having been to America. When Dani asks about her own home, there’s a brief hesitation that makes her more than a little nervous before a handful of photographs come through.

It’s a nice enough apartment—posters on the walls for various movies and bands. The kitchen is grey and clean, shiny appliances built into the counter. There’s a toaster shaped like Darth Vader’s helmet and what appear to be magnets featuring the Muppets on the fridge beside it. The bedroom ceiling is a little slanted, a window set inside it, letting in clean, white sunlight to spread against the plain, blue duvet, the pillows and the green plaid blanket folded over the end of the bed.

It has character. Dani has no difficulty imagining herself inside of it and maybe that’s why she says yes so readily.

Maybe that’s why she doesn’t even hesitate.

_________

“You’re going to get yourself axe-murdered.”

“Aren’t you just a bundle of Christmas magic?”

“You don’t know anything about this person.”

“I think that’s sort of the idea.”

“And now they’ll be staying in my flat. With my things.”

“Jamie, if you want me to back out then—”

Jamie huffs and rolls her head to the side, fixing Rebecca with a slightly pinched look. She’s lying horizontally on her bed, back flat and arms stretched out, watching as Rebecca puts the finishing touches on a Christmas tree she bought online and hauled all the way to town. It’s a little thing, small and completely _pink_ , which is probably the least Christmas-y thing Jamie’s ever seen, but she keeps her mouth shut about it. There are more important things to complain about.

Things like:

“I just don’t want my best friend getting axe-murdered in America of all places.”

Lifting her gaze, Rebecca smirks, eyes shimmering in the glow of the multi-colored light bulbs she’s stringing across the branches of the tree. “You’re saying there’s a better place for me to get axe-murdered.”

“I’m saying America houses a lot of axe-wielding fiends. And that you might be walking into a trap.”

“You have a bit of a preoccupation with this,” Rebecca says, and Jamie rolls her head back to stare at the ceiling. “I can’t even name an axe-murderer and you’re over there trying to convince me that a woman I’m not even going to be _meeting_ is one.”

“Lizzie Borden,” Jamie says.

“Oh, christ.” Rebecca huffs out a little laugh. “That doesn’t count. Too obvious.”

Looking at her again, Jamie glares. “The Man from the Train,” she says.

“I think it’s the Girl _on_ the Train, dear.”

Blinking in surprise, Jamie frowns. “No,” she says. “That’s not—”

“I’m sure she’ll be perfectly amiable,” Rebecca continues without hesitation. She fiddles with the silver star at the top of the three-foot tree and then steps back to admire her work. “Or, as Flora might say, perfectly splen—”

Jamie sits up and holds up one finger at the other woman. “Finish that and I’ll axe-murder you myself.”

“You wouldn’t _dare_.”

“I’ve gone and let you put a bloody Christmas tree in my flat—the one I’m letting your mystery murderer friend stay in, by the way—and this is how I get treated.”

In a few simple steps, Rebecca crosses the room, tugs Jamie up, and wraps her arms around her in a tight hug. “Thank you,” she sing-songs and Jamie grumbles a little. “I’ll let you burn the thing when I get back, okay?”

She pulls away, keeping her hands on Jamie’s shoulders and fixes her with an expression that’s half-serious, half-not. “Like I need seven more years of bad luck,” Jamie tells her.

Rebecca wrinkles her nose and laughs. “That’s mirrors, love.”

Jamie shrugs. “No difference,” she says, and Rebecca releases her, letting Jamie sling an arm around her shoulders as they look over at the pink tree again. “What are the chances,” she starts, feeling Rebecca turn to look at her, “of my flat catching fire while she’s here, do ya’ think?”

Rebecca hums, pretending to consider this. “I’d say...two in seven.”

It’s Jamie’s turn to laugh. “What a shitty fraction that is.”

“Shut up.” Rebecca elbows her. “I’ll miss you.”

This is something Jamie never thought she’d have, at the very least: someone to joke around with, someone who will say things like that and actually mean them. 

“S’only a week,” Jamie reminds her.

“Still.”

“I’ll miss you, too.”

“ _Good_ .” Rebecca leans her head a little against Jamie’s and they stand there for a little while, letting things fall quiet. It’s one of the first times since _Peter_ that the silence has nothing to do with the weight of the world pressing down. Jamie thinks she could get used to it—things being as they are.

Rebecca is the one who breaks the silence eventually, saying, “You have to _behave_ yourself,” in the exact same voice she uses on Miles and Flora when they’re not listening to her.

Jamie scoffs. “As if I need a reminder.”

Another elbow bump to the ribs.

“She has your number for emergencies. If she calls, you have to play nice.”

She says it like Jamie has a history of baring her teeth to strangers. Maybe she does. Jamie is too stuck on the idea of some strange woman she’s never met being in possession of her cell phone number.

“God, lay off, _Mom_ ,” she jokes and Rebecca, thankfully, laughs. “I’ll be good. Cross my heart.”

And that’s enough promise, apparently, for Rebecca to not ask anymore questions.

_________

Dani’s mother is less than thrilled and spends the first half of their phone conversation admonishing Dani for trying to “run” from her problems. For her part, Dani stays silent and cool-headed, hardly even listening to the words coming out through her phone as it rests on the bed beside her suitcases. 

Instead, she focuses on packing, on checking off every item of the list she wrote by hand in the hours following her initial conversation with Rebecca. 

Outlet adapter? _Check_.

Passport? _Check_.

One too many sweaters? _Checkit-y check_.

“—work out if you just _tried_ ,” her mother says as Dani tucks a red and green sweater with Santa’s visage knitted on the front beneath her bras. “That boy loves you more than _anything_ and if you could—”

Briefly, Dani leaves the room to go and track down her thickest winter coat from her front closet, leaving her mother to ramble on and on without an audience. When she comes back, it’s as if she hasn’t missed anything at all. Eddie’s best qualities are currently being listed out in a sort of eloquy, her mother waxing poetic about a boy Dani’s known almost her entire life and never _once_ managed to be in love with.

“Hey, Mom?” she says, picking her phone up off the bed. Her mom splutters to a halt, waiting for whatever it is her daughter has to say next. “I understand that you’re upset about...about everything with Eddie and I-I...I understand that. Really, I do. But I don’t regret saying no to getting married and I never will. We’re not...right for each other, me and him. And nothing is going to change that.”

It’s probably the most honest she’s ever managed to be about the whole thing.

Clearly, her mother thinks so too because there’s a long pause before she can even manage a response, and even then it’s just:

“Dan...Dan _ielle_ , you know what? Go ahead and get away or a while. Think things over. And maybe Eddie will still be waiting for you when you come back.”

And, _whoosh_.

Right over her head.

Dani doesn’t have the strength to correct her again. 

She just says her goodbyes without acknowledging it and hangs up.

_________

It doesn’t hit Jamie until she’s standing in the airport what exactly she’s signed up for. 

Rebecca hugs her tightly a few times on their way to the security line. She reminds her to be good more than once and texts her visitor’s contact information while they take the escalators up a level so that Jamie has it.

 _Dani Clayton,_ the message boasts, and then the US area code followed by a _419_ number.

“Text me when you get there, okay?” Jamie asks, wincing at her own uncharacteristic worry. 

This is the trouble with getting attached to people, she thinks: the fear that comes with the thought of anything happening to them.

“I will, I will,” Rebecca says, nudging Jamie’s shoulder with a closed fist. “Be kind, okay? _Rewind_.”

Jamie laughs and says, “I don’t know what you mean.”

Rebecca smiles. “You know exactly what I mean,” she says, and then opens her arms again. “Now give mama another hug.”

She really is insufferable.

“God, don’t _call_ yourself that,” Jamie complains, but hugs her all the same. 

When she pulls away, Rebecca pinches both of her cheeks between her thumbs and forefingers, tilting Jamie’s face back and forth as she does. “My little schmoopsie-poo.”

“I’ll kill you in real life, Becs.”

A pat on the cheek. Another smile. “I’ll be going now,” Rebecca says and she pushes at Jamie a little again before turning around and going toward the waiting line.

Jamie stands where she is for a long moment, hands stuffed into her pockets. Waits just long enough for Rebecca to catch her staring and give her a slow, steady wave. Then she waves back, turns on her heel, and leaves.

_________

It’s night when Dani arrives at the address given to her by Rebecca, jet-lagged and excited, strung out on Starbucks coffee and a couple of ill-timed caffeine pills. There’d been no snow waiting for her in England, but, then, there hadn’t been any to wish her goodbye either. 

It’s six days before Christmas. 

The key is right where Rebecca promised it would be, resting on the top of the door frame and Dani has to rock up onto her tiptoes in order to pull it down. It sticks a bit in the lock—old building and all—but she wiggles it a little and then she’s stepping inside the warm, clean space. 

It’s dark, but she can make out the outline of the furniture enough to walk around slowly, looking for a lamp after she dumps her things by the door. It isn’t until it’s on and she’s standing in the middle of an apartment that is not her own, in a country she doesn’t live in, that Dani feels like she can _breathe._

Here, so far away from the troubles of home, she lets her habitual numbness slip away. Funny, she thinks, that not even twelve hours before, she’d been somewhere that seems so impossibly far away now. Some _one_ , perhaps, that seems so different and unreachable. 

There’s a bright, pink Christmas tree in the corner of the living room that looks brand new. One of the ornaments has a tag hanging off it that’s been ripped off only halfway. For some reason, it stands out so sorely from the rest of the flat, the only holiday decor in the place, and Dani smiles at the idea that Rebecca went out and bought it just for her arrival. 

The multi-colored bulbs fill the shadows with bright, neon colors and Dani sits on a couch that is not her own and takes a deep breath. Holds it in her chest. 

At some point, it escapes her, but she’s too busy marvelling at the last day of her life to notice.

_________

Jamie is just finishing her sixth beer when she decides to text Owen and beg for a ride back to the manor. It’s been a long day, what with the drive to and from London and getting all her things from her flat to the manor, and she realizes that she’d forgotten to pack something fairly essential. 

Her phone charger.

She remembers it because her phone is very, _very_ dead.

Which is, really, just her luck.

Briefly, she considers digging through her truck outside to use the ancient payphone in the corner of the pub, but decides against it. Her flat is just upstairs, after all, and so is her phone charger. 

There aren’t any strange cars parked outside and she hasn’t seen anyone come through that she didn’t recognize in the last few hours, so she thinks she should be fairly safe to just go up and grab it really quick before Rebecca’s home-swapper arrives.

The plan is to be quick.

But she’s a little drunk and clumsy when she isn’t, which means that—after she settles her tab—she trips her way up the stairs to her flat and nearly falls on her face more than once. And then there’s the fact that her keys are downstairs, confiscated by the bartender on duty, Finnley, who’s done it just to take the mickey as he always does. 

In a blurry sort of memory, she recalls the spare she put on the doorframe and reaches for it, fumbles her hand over the top of the door, and nearly falls again. Just manages to catch herself on the wall, hand flattening against it with a sharp _thud_ that echoes in her head. 

For a split second, she contemplates picking the lock with one of the bobby pins she knows is in the pocket of her jacket. She’s done it once before, when she locked her keys inside some time ago and didn’t want to bother calling her landlord so late at night. She can do it again.

But, before she can decide, the door opens a little, the chain still done, and a pretty and frightened face appears in the sliver of space it allows. Blue eyes blink at her in surprise, pink lips twisted into a lovely, little frown. Jamie is so dazed that it takes her a minute before she realizes who it is that’s looking at her.

When she does, she whispers, “Oh, _shit_ ,” under her breath, but her volume is off a little because she’s still a little drunk and the other woman hears her. Blinks in surprise. 

“Sorry,” Jamie rushes on, the word catching in her throat a little. “I...You must be Dani, Rebecca’s—” She cuts herself off, unsure of how to finish that statement, but it does it’s job anyway and the woman seems to relax a little. “I just...I didn’t think you’d be here yet and I forgot my phone charger, so I thought I’d…” She clears her throat, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her jacket and shaking her head. “I’ll just...leave you to it, then. Sorry to freak you out.”

She turns, just about to leave, but is stopped by a sweet voice behind her saying, “Wait, you…” 

When Jamie turns, the door is shutting, the sound of chain being undone clattering through the wood, and then it opens again to reveal one of the loveliest women Jamie’s ever seen. It floors her, the way the light seems to grow hazy around her lines and edges—the way she softens in the dim light of the hallway, the beautiful waves of her hair and the dip of her chin. 

She’s wearing a pair of high-waisted jeans, a sweater tucked into them, and there’s something to the shape of her hips that makes Jamie want to grip them. _Hard_. Dig her thumbs into the hollow of her bones and tug her in and it’s so sudden and visceral that shame flushes down her neck and chest and she forces herself to avert her eyes.

“Your phone charger,” Dani says. “Did you...Did you want it? I mean, that’s kind of important.”

Jamie laughs even though it isn’t necessarily funny. Says, “Yeah, um...Yeah, my phone died and I’m a little…” She pauses here, at a fork in the road regarding her own honesty about her situation. The alcohol decides for her. “ _Drunk_ ,” she whispers it, like it’s a secret or like there’s anyone nearby that might overhear her. It makes Dani crack a cute smile and laugh a little, so Jamie trudges on, a bit of certainty filling her chest. “I was gonna call my mate and get him to pick me up...but...y’know…”

“Dead phone,” Dani finishes and Jamie nods.

“Exactly.”

“Well, if you want…I don’t want you to be stranded or anything, so you can…” She steps aside instead of finishing, swinging the door open all the way to give Jamie enough room to enter.

“Really?” Jamie asks, a little disbelieving.

“Yeah, of course.”

So she’s beautiful _and_ nice. Jamie’s ears catch on her accent, too, and the melodic lilt to each of her words. She can’t say she’s ever had a thing for anyone’s voice before, but she thinks that could change with Dani. And then she scolds herself, reminds herself to _calm down_ , because Dani is visiting for a week and then she’ll be back and off to America again.

And she’s very possibly straight, but let’s focus on just one heartbreak at a time.

It’s strange to step into her flat and feel no ownership over it, especially because it’s almost as if Dani’s presence has made no impact. Things are still exactly where she left them, everything largely untouched.

Dani steps inside after her and closes the door, leaving the two of them to stand there sort of awkwardly, like they’re either sizing one another up or trying to get used to the other’s presence, and then Jamie remembers that she’s supposed to be on a mission. Her limbs still feel numb and tingly, her mind a little foggy and distant, and she’s already sluggish and tired, so she thinks that she can hardly be blamed for taking a moment to catch up with her own expectations.

“Be outta your hair in a minute,” Jamie says, forcing her eyes to drop from Dani’s face. 

She steps around her and makes her way to her bedroom down the short hallway, and finally finds where it is that things are different—there are two suitcases in the corner of her bedroom, one of them flung open to reveal some neatly folded clothes. She resists the urge to stare and hurries—to the best of her ability—to the bed, bending down to unplug her charger from the wall. 

When she stands back up, she stumbles a little, her own dizziness catching up with the sudden movement. Dani is standing by the doorway and if they hadn’t already spoken—if Jamie hadn’t _heard_ Dani’s voice—she might have been certain she was imagining her. That she was some kind of strange hallucination because Jamie is certain that would be the only explanation for this woman she doesn’t know being _burned_ into her retinas already.

Jamie’s legs falter and she sits down on the edge of her own bed by mere accident, her body aiming to send her sprawling onto the floor. “Shit,” she mumbles and then starts laughing because she’s drunk and in her apartment with a stranger and her phone is dead.

This night isn’t going at _all_ like she planned.

“Are you okay?” Dani asks, already so concerned. 

“Yeah, yeah.” Jamie waves her hand in the other woman’s direction, shutting her eyes against the spinning world and nods. “All good. Just...y’know...seein’ two of ya’.” When she opens her eyes again, Dani is giving her a bemused smile like she’s half-charmed, half-concerned. Jamie clears her throat, trying to get rid of the thick note of embarrassment that feels stuck in it. “Not makin’ a great first impression, I reckon.”

At that, Dani smiles enough for it to reach her eyes. “Do you live...nearby?” she asks. 

And Jamie might not be thinking with utmost clarity, but it’s fairly obvious that Dani is asking, not out of a desire to make small-talk with the strange woman in a flat that isn’t hers, but because she’s a little worried about her getting home. 

But the question is funny even if Dani doesn’t know why, so Jamie laughs. Can’t help it. Watches the way a pretty frown twists on Dani’s mouth as she tries to get the joke.

“Sorry,” Jamie says. “That’s just…” She shakes her head, and then _out with it_ : “ _This_ is actually my flat. Rebecca, she...I let her offer it for exchange because she’s a live-in nanny for a family outside of town.”

Dani blinks like:

Oh.

Right. 

Okay.

“So, wait, you’re staying…”

“At the manor she works at,” Jamie says. “It’s fine, really. I wasn’t saying that to...I just…” A wave of nausea spirals through her head and stomach. “Okay, woah.”

“Do you wanna...stay here, or…?” When Jamie gives her a confused look, Dani continues eagerly, “I just mean...It’s your apartment— _flat_ —and…I can sleep on the couch.”

Jamie’s eyebrows go up. “You don’t even know me,” she says. “I could be an axe murderer.”

God, Rebecca would be laughing herself silly if she knew what was going on right now.

Dani frowns. “ _Are_ you an axe murderer?” she asks, easy as that.

“Well,” Jamie says, blinking a few times, “ _no_ , but I just…”

“Then we’re all good.” Dani waves her hand. “I’ll just…” 

“No, I can...Look, you’re the guest. I can just…” Painstakingly, Jamie gets to her feet and takes a wobbling step forward. “I can just sleep it off for a bit and then...be on my way. If you’re _sure_.”

Slowly, a smile creeps back up Dani’s lips. “Are _you_ sure?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Jamie nods sleepily.

“Okay.”

“Okay. So I’ll just—”

“Yeah.”

Jamie makes her way across the bedroom and Dani steps aside to allow her access to the door. Before she can pass by, though, Dani stops her, turning so that the heat of her gaze warms the side of Jamie’s face. 

“Wait,” she says, and Jamie freezes. Turns to face her. “Sorry, I just...you know my name and I don’t…”

Oh. Yeah.

Jamie offers out a hand. Says, “Jamie,” and Dani’s soft skin slides against her own, gripping her loosely and shaking her hand once before the touch retreats.

“Nice to meet you, Jamie,” Dani says.

Jamie smiles. “Yeah, you too.” She pauses for a minute, letting herself look over Dani’s face and eyes before finally building up enough strength to break away completely. “Well, um...goodnight.”

“Right. Goodnight.” 

By the time Jamie is set up on the couch, her situation and the last twenty minutes start to sink in all the way. A good portion of her is absolutely aghast at her own audacity, at Dani’s kindness. Her blood vibrates and buzzes in her veins, like some kind of adrenaline rush she hasn’t earned, making her feel even drunker than she did before. 

Lying on her couch in the dark, a couple of blankets drawn up over herself, Jamie listens to the sounds of Dani moving around in the bedroom. She feels like a teenager again, having a slumber party with a straight friend she can’t help but love a little more than she should. 

She could be making Dani up. Really. She could be some kind of hallucination. That would, at least, make the whole thing that less _horrifying_. 

But, no. Dani is real. Jamie thinks about the way the lamp in her bedroom reflected in those blue eyes and has the clearest thought she’s had since she started drinking, which is this:

 _Shit_.

_________

The first morning Dani spends in England is strange. 

Some might even call it boring.

In retrospect, there’s a good chance she should have seen it coming. It isn’t as if she’d swapped homes with someone living in London or some other place that can boast more than one car on the road every ten to fifteen minutes. Peace is what she’d come looking for anyway. Time away from the bustle of her everyday life and the crushing weight of expectation.

It’s just that her first night sets the bar a little high as far as adventure and the unexpected goes. She’s never had someone she doesn’t really know spend the night, not even on her couch. She’s also never had anyone spend the night on _their_ couch while she took the bed.

Jamie is gone when Dani gets up the next morning, the blankets refolded and put back where they were, all signs of her brief intrusion dusted from the surfaces. It probably has something to do with the fact that Dani doesn’t wake up until close to noon, but it still gives her pause when she peeks out into the living room, running her shaky fingers through her hair to flatten her bed head _just in case_.

But, no need. No one is there to see her.

She’d been planning on finding some aspirin for the other woman, getting her a glass of water. Playing the part of a hospitable host even if the apartment _does_ belong to her uninvited guest. Of course, it had nothing to do with Jamie’s messy brown curls or the lines beneath her eyes, the way she slumped against the wall, or how she’d lingered in the doorway of her bedroom the night before, close enough to touch.

It would be crazy if it did. She’s a stranger.

Dani tells herself this over and over again. Intermittently, she mixes in a reminder to enjoy her vacation without letting herself get carried away in _what-if_ ’s and imaginary scenarios. _Impossible_ scenarios.

Because every time she even _begins_ to entertain those thoughts, guilt rolls hotly in her stomach and she immediately remembers how Edmund looked in that restaurant, down on one knee, eyes open with childlike anticipation as he awaited her answer.

This is what she was trying to get away from. 

And it’s found her anyway.

_________

“There you are! I was beginning to think you were trying to freeze yourself solid out there.”

Jamie stomps her boots on the dirt mat at the edge of the backdoor and pulls her frigid hands from her pockets, tugging off her mittens. Her breath is sharp and uneven, nose and lips pinked from the cold. Her head is still pounding dully, the last dregs of her hangover bumping against the backs of her eyes. At the sound of Owen’s voice, they give a particularly unforgiving _pulse_ and she sighs, closing her eyes for a moment.

“Jamie?” Owen calls. He peeks around the edge of the little hallway, standing in the doorway with a bowl in his arms, a spoon held in his hands. “Alright?”

“Fine,” she says. She unzips her coat and drifts toward him, rubbing her hands together. “Please tell me you’ve got something warm in here.”

Owen steps aside to let her pass and nods to the mug steaming on the counter. “Some good ol’ hot chocolate,” he tells her. “Aren’t I just the best?”

Jamie stops at the island countertop and picks up one of the mugs, cupping it with both hands and letting it warm her up a little. “If _you_ made it then it might make you the worst, actually.”

“Oh, come on. My hot chocolate isn’t _that_ bad.”

“Right, well it isn’t that _good_ either.”

At the look Owen gives her—mock hurt, lips parted in a soundless gasp—Jamie laughs and takes a sip from her mug. “It’s a mix,” he tells her. “So you can stop bullying me.”

“What’s this I hear about bullying Owen?” 

Jamie turns to find Hannah coming in, her arms crossed over her stomach to stave off some of the pervading chill. “He’s made me hot chocolate,” she explains. “I was just asking for my last rites.”

Hannah laughs, delighted in a way that catches Jamie off guard—so affable and good-natured. It isn’t that she’s serious at all times, but she’s usually not given to teasing Owen in the same way that Jamie and Rebecca are, which Jamie has always chalked up to the more-than-massive affection she harbors for him. Something is different about her. It’s in the set of her shoulders, the way she throws her head back a little as she laughs and then the way her eyes glance to Owen, who smiles back at her rather than looking annoyed.

Oh.

 _Gross_.

Jamie hides her proud grin behind another sip of hot chocolate. There’ll be time to interrogate both parties about it later—and hopefully time to let Rebecca know of these interesting developments. But, for now, she’s happy to just lean against the counter and let the warm drip of the hot chocolate sizzle its way down her throat, heating up the slide of her chest as it goes. 

The mistake she makes comes in letting her guard down, though, because then, in the silence it allows, Hannah has something to take hold of and _pull_.

“You must have come in late last night,” Hannah says. “I didn’t hear you.”

“Oh.” She gets the word out just as she goes to take another drink and ends up choking a little, some of the hot chocolate dribbling down her chin. She sets the mug down and reaches for a nearby roll of paper towels, using one of them to scrub her face dry and clean. “Um, I...Yeah, I did.”

There’s a bit of a muscle knot in her right shoulder blade that makes the way she turns back around a little uncomfortable. Here she’d been proud in her choice of couch for over a year and, after one night on it, she’s starting to rethink her previous praise. 

As it twinges, she’s reminded of the blurry events that led to her sleeping on the couch in the first place. Dani’s bright smile and the smell of her perfume are the clearest memories she can recall, but she doesn’t think she needs much more of that to go off. She must have been asleep when Jamie got up that morning— _dead_ asleep, too—because Jamie accidentally knocked over her entire key bowl from the table by the door on her way out and there’d been no stir from inside her bedroom.

No one came out to see what was happening, to say good morning, to just _be_ there so that Jamie could get another look at her, sober this time. But that’s for the best. Jamie tells herself it is because it’s only a week. Less than a week, now. And she needs to keep her distance.

“Are you sure about that?” Hannah asks, one eyebrow twitched upwards.

Jamie nods around a mouthful of hot chocolate. Swallows. Says, “Yeah, o’course.”

As she watches, Owen and Hannah share a look that she doesn’t appreciate in the slightest. It lasts for a beat too long and then they both look at her again, Owen mixing whatever is in the bowl with a look of stern consideration, Hannah mirroring it on her own features.

“Where did you sleep last night, young lady?” Owen asks, forcing a frown.

“What’s her name?” Hannah throws in, sounding a good deal less accusatory.

“Are you using protection?”

Jamie splutters. “What? I’m not...It’s…” She closes her eyes, her headache flaring a little at the sudden excitement. “There’s no... _girl_ .” When Owen’s expression turns a little confused she quickly adds in, “There’s no _anyone_. Okay? I just…”

“You just…” he prods.

She hates him. Really, she does.

“I forgot my phone charger in my flat,” she begins, hating herself already for sinking so low as to actually humor this line of questioning. “So, I...I thought I’d pop in and get it real quick, but...Rebecca’s... _guest_ or whatever was already there and we—”

“Oh, Jamie, you _didn’t_.”

“Owen, _Jesus_ , let me finish.”

He winces. “Sorry.”

“I was a little...Well, I couldn’t drive and my phone was dead so she let me sleep on the couch.”

For a second, the other two just look at her like they’re trying to figure out how much of the truth she’s telling. The sudden intensity of their curiosity is a little annoying—and certainly unexpected—but it isn’t as if she’s ever brought someone for them to meet or even _talked_ about a girl in the time that they’ve known one another.

Really, it’s because there hasn’t been anyone to mention.

Finally, Owen just says, “Okay.”

Hannah nods as if to agree with him.

“Okay?” Jamie asks.

He nods again. “Okay. If that’s the story you want to go with, then—”

“Alright, I’m finished with you lot.” She pushes herself off the counter where she’s leaned and steps around them to get to the back door. “I’ll be outside when you’re ready to apologize.”

“And we’ll be in here when you’re ready to tell the truth!” Owen calls once she disappears around the corner. 

She thinks she can hear Hannah admonishing him quietly, but then she’s outside again, left with nothing but buzzing of her own thoughts.

_________

Bly is lovely and cold, even if it isn’t as green as it had been in the pictures on the internet. Dani spends part of her day wandering around the little area she’s comfortable being in, walking along the river and occasionally snapping pictures of the rippling blue water and the cottages that look like they’re from another time entirely.

It’s beautiful, and it feels sort of like coming home in a way that Dani doesn’t think she’s ever experienced before. She tries not to linger on the feeling too much, simply happy to let it wash over her without proper explanation. If she thinks too much, she thinks she might end up getting herself in trouble again, and that really is the last thing she needs. 

She’s walking back to the pub when her phone buzzes. It’s an email from Rebecca, and she stops walking to open it eagerly.

_Your home is lovely. I hope your trip is going just as well!_

Dani smiles and types her own message back almost immediately, not bothering to wonder if she should maybe wait a little so as to not seem too eager. 

_I am! And the apartment is great too. I actually met your friend, Jamie, last night and thanked her for letting me kick her out for the week_.

She goes to tuck her phone away, expecting another response to take some time, but her phone buzzes again almost immediately and Rebecca’s next message is short.

 _You met Jamie??_ it reads, and Dani is just starting to figure out how to respond to that when another one comes through. _How did that happen?_

She types an explanation quickly, smiling and waving back at a young man who’s getting out of his car and entering the pub. He unlocks the door and goes inside, the late afternoon sun glinting on the wet pavement beneath his boots as they disappear inside with him.

_That’s hilarious. I can’t believe she stayed. That’s SO unlike her._

One of the things Dani likes about Rebecca—who she’s only known for about four days—is how quickly she drops formalities. She’s so fast to treat Dani like they’ve been close friends for years rather than the strangers they are in reality—at least conversationally. 

Take this message for example. It’s said almost like Dani has experience with Jamie enough to know this to be uncharacteristic behavior. Like she knows who Jamie is and what she normally does versus what she would never do.

Dani allows herself to briefly imagine a life where she might be privy to that kind of knowledge. A life where she isn’t just a visitor, but a friend. To Rebecca...to _Jamie_. One where it’s her that’s being invited to stay at Jamie’s apartment. Not on the couch, no, but—

“Fancy meetin’ you here.”

The sudden interruption makes Dani jump, standing there at the edge of the parking lot to the pub, staring down at her phone that’s long since gone dark. Jamie is standing in front of her, looking a little curious and a lot concerned, darting her eyes between Dani’s face and her phone, still held in her hand like she’s supposed to be looking at it.

“Oh, hey, it’s...it’s you!” Dani winces at her own volume and then again when she sees Jamie do the same. “I mean, sorry...um...Hi, it’s...I wasn’t expecting to see you again...here…”

Jamie quirks an eyebrow. “It’s a small town.”

“Right. Of course. I just...I didn’t think—”

She’s not sure _what_ it is that she didn’t think, but she’s saved from having to finish the thought when Jamie jumps in with a rescue.

“Feel like gettin’ a drink?” She jerks her head back towards the pub. “S’always slow right at open. Thought I’d get one for meself if you wanna join.”

Dani’s phone buzzes in her hand with another message from Rebecca and she lets herself consider the synchronicity in that. 

If she was the kind of person who believed in it, she might think the whole thing to be a lot like _fate_. But she isn’t, so she doesn’t.

But it still feels right to say, “Yes.”

_________

They sit in a booth in the corner for privacy, though there’s only one other customer and he’s seated at the bar. Dani gets herself comfortable while Jamie goes up to get them both drinks, spending a good few minutes laughing with the bartender who waved at Dani earlier. 

He’s a handsome guy, a cleanly-trimmed beard and a bright, white smile. He laughs at every other thing Jamie says and Dani eyes him warily. She’s never been good at reading body language, but she allows herself to understand why he might be interested in Jamie that way. There’s the way she holds herself to think of, that swagger of a walk that wasn’t present in her inebriated state the night before, but which Dani can admire now. There’s that laser-focused stare when she’s watching you. Dani has only spoken to her once before, and she knows what it is to be struck beneath her spell already.

Jamie wanders back over with two beer bottles in her hands, holding them up in a silent offering as she nears the table. Dani smiles and bites her lip, sitting on her hands to keep them to herself, as Jamie slides into the booth across from her.

“Here you are,” Jamie says, poking the bottle across the table towards Dani. 

Dani takes it. “Thanks.” 

“’Course.”

They drink in silence for a little while, just getting used to being sober in the same place. Maybe trying to figure out safe topics or what they’re allowed to be to one another. After spending her day alone, Dani feels more than a little out of place spending time with another person, and she tells herself that it has nothing to do with _who_ that person is.

She thinks she would be awkward around anyone right now, stunning woman whose bed she’s sleeping in or not.

“This is actually a bit of a thanks of my own,” Jamie says eventually. When Dani looks at her in asksance, she swallows the drink of her beer she’s just taken and continues. “For lettin’ me crash on the couch last night.”

“It’s _your_ couch,” she reminds her. 

Jamie shrugs. “Still. You didn’t have to, so...cheers.” She lifts up her glass and Dani bumps her own against it, smiling a little goofy and too endeared to care.

“So, um...Are you from here or—?” she tries, and, thankfully, Jamie takes the bite.

“Um, no, actually. Little mining town a ways from here,” Jamie says. “Only been here around two years.”

“And you like it?”

“Sure. Well, enough. Folks are decent. Got a good enough job for now.”

“And friends who borrow your apartment for strangers,” Dani jokes. 

“Got me there.” Jamie takes a swig of her beer, then fixes Dani with a serious look. “What about you? Bly’s certainly an odd spot for a vacation. Running from something?”

It’s clear from the way she says it that she’s not being serious, but it makes something ache inside of her all the same. There must be some evidence of this on her face, too, because Jamie frowns and rushes to correct herself, but Dani shakes her head and waves a hand to cut her off.

“No, it’s…” she starts, and then tries for a real explanation, “I actually...I got...There’s a guy, a, um...my best friend, actually, and he sort of...proposed to me and I didn’t...And things have been so weird now that I just...It’s nice to get away, you know?”

“Well...not exactly, no. But...I think I get the idea, yeah.” Jamie tries to blink away her surprise. “Were you at least...dating the guy?”

Here, Dani laughs and Jamie groans.

“That’s the super awkward thing, actually. He’d been dating this other...mutual friend of ours and things were getting serious. Or... _I_ thought they were getting serious, but then he...ended things and the next thing I know he’s saying that he’s been in love with me since we were...for a long time and asking me to marry him and—”

“You didn’t feel the same.” Jamie whistles through her teeth. “Poor bloke.”

“Actually, I’m...gay.”

And Jamie’s breath catches. The way the confession comes out is so blunt and unforgiving, like it was something that Dani had to _force_ out and she can’t help but wonder how many people she’s said that to.

“Oh.”

Dani nods. “Yeah. And...I didn’t exactly tell him that before he... _Yeah_.” She takes another swig of her beer. 

For a while, neither of them says anything, and Dani’s heart starts thudding out a very peculiar cadence that can’t be normal. But then Jamie smiles at her, just like that, and it doesn’t feel strange anymore.

“Well, hey,” she says, “you’re in good company.”

Dani’s not exactly sure what to say to that, too caught off by the _hope_ unfurling like a long rug inside her chest—taking up residence in the bump of her pulse beneath her veins—to form a rational response. Some part of her had been planning to apologize for starting their conversation so heavy and dropping all that information in one fell swoop, but now she doesn’t think she’d have the breath to. 

This new piece of information makes her flush hotly and _dammit_ , this is the last thing she needs to be feeling right now. There’s a slick voice in the back of her head telling her to _lean into it_ , to just _go_ with it—she’s on vacation, after all, even if it doesn’t look like a vacation too many others would take. But Jamie has kind eyes and a wonderful smile. Her voice sways gently in the air in a way that makes Dani want to curve every path she’s ever been on towards her and that’s a dangerous way to feel about someone that can’t exist as more than a fling.

Even if she now knows that she has a little more of a chance. Even if it’s small.

“So...What do you do exactly?” she says, needing to change the subject.

“I’m a gardener. Over at the same place Rebecca nannies.”

“Oh, that’s nice.”

“I like it enough.”

“Do you have much to... _garden_ in the winter.”

Jamie laughs. “No,” she says. “Not really. But the job includes groundskeeping so I keep busy enough.”

Dani feels like hitting her own forehead with her palm. “That makes sense. Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Another shrug. “What about you?”

“I...teach. I’m...an elementary school teacher in Ohio.”

Jamie’s eyebrows twitch upwards. “Ohio?”

“Yeah,” Dani confirms. “It’s...it’s honestly so tiring but...rewarding. I don’t know. I have a strange relationship with teaching.”

“Sounds like it.”

A look of amusement flickers over Jamie’s face as she speaks. It’s quick, but Dani catches it all the same, and thinks she likes the look of it. Likes the ease with which it's procured. Likes the way it makes her feel. Finally, she says, “Is it going to snow here? I thought...for some reason, when I thought _Christmas in England_ , I thought... _snow_. Was that...incorrect?”

That gets her another one of Jamie’s surprised laughs, and she finds herself falling more and more into the sound each time. It bats around in her mind as it falls through the air, spreading out to fill the room and fall quieter and quieter until it disappears. “No, you’re not... _wrong,_ per se. It snows. Just not...It’s funny here, is all. More likely to get it rained out within a day or two.”

“Oh.” There’s a touch of disappointment to Dani’s voice.

“Sorry. Bly isn’t exactly Vermont.”

Dani freezes for a moment. “Is that…” She stops for a moment, staring at Jamie in a way that makes Jamie feel frozen. Stuck. “Was that a _White Christmas_ reference?”

Jamie winces. “Caught that did ya’?”

“Yeah, I did.” Dani smiles, wishing that they were sitting closer so that she could reach out and touch Jamie—in that little way she’s seen other women do when they’re flirting. But there’s a whole table between them and, even if there wasn’t, she’s not sure she’d be brave enough to do anything about it. 

“Yeah, sorry.” Jamie makes a face at herself and takes another drink.

“Don’t be,” Dani tells her. “It’s...It’s cute.”

And, okay. Apparently she’s brave enough for _that_.

Jamie just stares at her. The confession sticks heavily to the somewhat-muggy pub air, and Dani stares back and that’s as much as happens for a little while. It sinks in honey-like and slow and it’s Jamie who is the first to recover. 

“Glad someone thinks so,” she says, voice pitched a bit of a whisper.

Dani thinks she knows the feeling. She nods dumbly, still a little surprised by herself, but forces herself to say this next part because she thinks it’s important: “I think so.”

Jamie grins. “You flirt,” she accuses, and Dani just laughs.

What else is there for her to do?

_________

They spend a few hours like that, just sitting there and talking, one of them occasionally getting up to get another drink. The pub fills up a little the later it gets, but it never gets too packed. When Jamie starts drinking water instead, things begin to wind down and, even though she can’t imagine this ending, but all good things must.

And, anyway, spending so much time under Dani’s watchful, lovely gaze is exhausting work. Her mind lingers so much on her lips, her eyelashes, the shape of her eyebrows, that it’s constantly playing catch up. She feels like she could fall asleep sitting right there as she finishes off her second glass of water.

Eventually, Jamie offers to walk Dani up to her flat, so up they go. Laughing, nudging one another and teasing in a way that’s so familiar already that it’s fixing to break Jamie’s heart clean in two, and then they reach the top of the stairs—Jamie’s door sitting right there, locked and waiting—and they’re not laughing anymore.

“So, um...Thanks,” Dani says as they linger there.

Jamie frowns, a little confused, with her hands in her pockets. “What for?” 

“The...the drinks and the company.” There’s a brief moment of hesitation and then Dani gestures vaguely between them. “ _This_. It’s...I had a good time.”

“Oh,” Jamie breathes. “Yeah, me too.” She swallows thickly. Licks her suddenly dry lips. “Good to know you don’t scare easy. Most girls are usually heading for the hills by now.”

Dani’s laughter seems to catch in her throat. “Oh, they are _not_.”

“Are, actually,” Jamie counters.

“Are not.”

“ _Are_.”

They stare at one another then, still smiling but in a different way now. There’s something in Dani’s eyes that makes Jamie think that maybe she’s going to _kiss_ her and Jamie’s _stuck_ to the thought. For all the time she’s spent all day telling herself that she could keep her distance, that she _would_ , she’s doing a fantastic impression of someone who simply doesn’t _give a shit_.

It started at the manor just that afternoon, when she couldn’t let go of the conversation in which she’d been cornered by Hannah and Owen. Continued as she worked her way around the property, sweeping off paths and cleaning out gutters. And then, she’d…

Well, she’d gotten restless. Felt like a drink. Forgotten that she couldn’t go home.

Some combination of those three.

There’s something about Dani that brought her back here, so she could stand in this exact moment, wondering if she’s about to be kissed—if she’s about to _kiss_ her back. And it’s so soppy she wants to gag because she’s _never_ like this, but there’s nothing to be done about it at this point.

It’s too far gone for that.

“I didn’t run away, did I?” Dani asks, and she’s kidding, maybe, but there’s a serious note there too. Something emotional that Jamie can’t help but want to analyze to death. 

Jamie smiles at her, shaking her head. “Not yet, anyway,” she says, trying to keep her tone light, but the deliberate way that Dani is looking at her makes her feel dizzy—like the night before all over again, only she’s dreadfully, terribly sober this time. 

Dani takes a step forward and there’s a brief pause—one brief moment where _anything_ could happen—and then everything shatters and she’s _right there_ , forehead to Jamie’s and Jamie can’t help it.

She kisses her. Hard. Like she’s afraid Dani is going to disappear, like she’s running out of oxygen and this is her only chance to breathe. And, here’s the thing, really:

Dani kisses her back.

Hands in Jamie’s hair, pulling her in, opening her mouth and bumping her tongue against the roof of Jamie’s mouth. Her lips are so soft and careful that Jamie is half-convinced she’s imagining that it’s happening, just like she did the night before.

And she’s certain, now, that Dani has to be real because she’s _there_ and _solid_ and _kissing Jamie back_ , which is the most important part. She’s deepening the kiss and bumping their noses together inelegantly and she changes the angle. Jamie brings her own hand up the small of Dani’s back, looping her fingers through the other woman’s belt loops to tug her in closer with her other hand.

At some point, they need air and Dani tugs away, lips smudged pink and her breath puffing hotly out against Jamie’s chin and mouth. “We shouldn’t—” she starts, but Jamie shakes her head, leans forward to tuck her face into Dani’s neck and kiss the skin there. Hears Dani sigh and feels her melt against her.

“I know, I just…” she begins, but her voice aches with a melancholy she doesn’t have it in her to acknowledge quite yet.

But, fortunately—

“Not that…” Dani shakes her head. “That’s not a _no_ or... _stop_ ,” she explains. “But maybe we should…” she nods back toward the door behind them and Jamie pulls away just long enough to look at it, then back at Dani.

Dani who looks so flushed and weightless that Jamie can’t imagine wanting anything more.

“Yeah,” she agrees. “Yeah...Let’s…”

She can’t finish, but she doesn’t need to. 

Dani understands. She takes Jamie’s hand, digs her borrowed key out of her jacket, and tugs her toward the door.

..


	2. the busy gal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay this is gonna be way longer than i planned.
> 
> i’d say i’m sorry but i’m not so i hope you’re okay with this not lining up exactly with the holidays. oh, well.

..

Dani is jostled awake quite literally. For reasons her sleep-addled brain can’t immediately comprehend, the bed is shaking, shifting her back and forth beneath the warmth of the covers. 

She opens her eyes slowly, blinking away any sleep that might remain, and stares at the wall across from her. The sun is up and bright, a triangle of light slanting in from the window and spattered on the light, blue paint. She follows it down the wall, down the trimming. It’s when she spots her bra, lying forgotten just out of reach of the light, that the night before comes flooding back and she can’t help the smile that accompanies the memories.

The bed shakes again.

Dani rolls over slowly, keeping the sheets tucked high up on her chest, and finds Jamie sitting on the other side, her back to Dani. She’s bent down and Dani understands that she’s putting on her shoes. 

That’s what’s shaking the bed.

The world tilts a bit as the realization washes over her and her hand goes out to touch the small of Jamie’s back through her shirt, the one she’d been wearing the night before. It happens without her planning it, like it’s beyond her control, and it’s something that she’s _supposed_ to be doing, and she thinks _how_? 

How is she going to go back home now, how is she already so attached after _one night_ —two if the night Jamie spent on the couch is to be included. How is it that Jamie is already sinking into the hollow of her bones, painting over the places where she’s been broken and molding her like clay into the kind of woman she always wanted to be. The kind of woman who’s brave and goes after what she wants. Who _cares_ so deeply without any expectation of it being returned. Of it lasting.

Filled with only the buoyant hope that it is, that it _can_ be.

“Sneaking out on me?” she whispers, just loud enough that there isn’t any way Jamie hasn’t heard her. Her voice cracks with the linger of exhaustion, a little more hoarse than she usually is. The muscles beneath her hand freeze as Jamie hears her and she sits up slowly. Turns around even slower.

“No, I’m just…” Jamie says it like it’s an apology for some sin that hasn’t been committed yet, but she reaches out and catches Dani’s outstretched wrist in her own. Brushes her thumb across her pulse. “It’s almost ten. I’m really _so_ late already.”

Dani hums a satisfied little sound, too relieved by the answer to keep the emotion out. Not running out on her after all, she thinks. Just incredibly late for work.

“Oh. Sorry.”

Jamie shakes her head and leans over far enough to kiss Dani’s cheek. “Don’t be,” she says. “Sorry I have to run out so quick. Believe me when I tell you it’s the _last_ thing I want to do.”

Her eyes rake down Dani’s face to her bare collarbones and shoulders, the dip of skin where the blanket begins covering her up. She’s still close, hovering nearby, and Dani loves her lips. Really, she does. Their perfect bow, the way they move as she gives a lazy smile. She remembers, quite suddenly, how warm and careful they’d been between her legs the night before. The way the fingers gripping her wrist twisted and moved and felt inside her.

She pulls her hand away and takes the opportunity to slide it up Jamie’s shoulder, gripping the fabric of her shirt to tug her down close enough. Jamie makes a small, shocked noise against Dani’s mouth and then kisses her back, lifting her hand to cup the side of Dani’s jaw, coaxing her to open her mouth more so Jamie can slide her tongue inside.

“Any chance I can convince you to stay a little while longer?” Dani whispers and Jamie thumbs the side of her smile as she presses their foreheads together. “I promise to make it worth your while.”

“Yeah?” Jamie smirks. “How do you plan to do that?”

Dani pretends to be lost in thought, darting in to dot kisses down Jamie’s cheek and then down to her neck. Jamie tilts her head obediently, granting further access. “I have a few ideas.” She draws some of Jamie’s soft skin into her mouth, sucking on it a bit possessively, before finally pulling away. “But only if it’s not an inconvenience.”

Jamie looks her over, swallowing visibly, and shakes her head, like she’s trying to convince herself that Dani is real after all. “I think I can spare a few minutes,” she decides.

“Care to time me?”

“I’d rather just enjoy. You’re awful confident this morning.”

“Well, last night was a learning experience.”

Jamie smiles. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Dani says.

“Then by all means.” Jamie waves a hand between the two of them and Dani smiles, sitting up a little. As she does, the blankets fall away and Jamie makes another noise like she can’t believe her eyes. “Oh, Dani. God, you’re lovely.” 

Dani glances away at the attention. “It’s nothing you didn’t see last night,” she says.

Jamie lifts a hand and drifts her fingertips across one of Dani’s nipples, making her gasp and bite at her bottom lip. “Yeah,” she says, “but the lighting was shit. Now I can see you properly.”

She grins and Dani leans in again because _damn_ that stupid, charming smile. “Come here and kiss me.”

Jamie does, kissing her warm and soft, shifting to drag her fingertips over Dani’s shoulders and upper arms, making her sigh into her mouth and squirm closer. She’s so unlike anyone Dani’s ever met and especially that she’s _been_ with physically. Intimately. She struggles to remember that a mere forty-eight hours ago, neither of them had known the other existed.

Dani wraps her arms around Jamie’s neck and pulls her over and onto the bed. Jamie breaks the kiss and she sinks onto her, laughing at the silliness of falling so directly _onto_ the other woman.

She lands in a way that places Dani’s blanket-covered thigh directly between her legs and the laughter dies in her throat at once. It’s replaced by eyes filled with affection and desire. Dani cups her cheek, pressing her fingertips to the sharp edge of Jamie’s jaw, and kisses her again, pressing her thigh up until Jamie moans.

It’s not long before Jamie is sharing some of the workload, rolling her hips down against Dani’s thigh. Given the way she’s reacting, Dani thinks it must not matter—the layers of fabric between them and the fact that Jamie is wearing jeans. Jamie rocks down, eyes screwed up tight, lips parted and so beautiful Dani can’t tear her eyes away.

The sound of Jamie’s breath caught in her throat, the way the sunlight lights up the deep brown color of her hair, the sharp bones of her hips caught in Dani’s hands as she guides her to grind down harder, _faster_ . Dani lifts one of them and slides it beneath Jamie’s shirt, curving it around one of her breasts, then poking her fingers beneath the fabric of the cup to pinch at her nipple. To make Jamie curse around a moan that’s followed by a sharp, “ _Dani_.”

She can remember the way her skin looked in the lamplight the night before, the pale and soft expanse of it. How it tasted against her tongue, how it felt against her own. She kisses Jamie again, pressing her thigh up as hard as she can.

“You’re so pretty,” Dani breathes and Jamie nods, pants out another curse. 

“I’m gonna come,” Jamie rasps against her lips.

So Dani grabs her hips even tighter, pulls her down harder and harder until Jamie is shaking like a leaf against her, letting out a long moan in the shape of Dani’s name. She collapses a little against Dani as the aftershocks fade. For her part, Dani just holds her tighter, kissing her forehead and cheeks, closing her eyes against the wish to never let Jamie go again.

It’s too early to feel that way, she tells herself. So she can’t.

Even if she does.

Hot breath puffs out against Dani’s neck, and then those lips are kissing her sternum, tugging at the blankets covering her while Dani continues to hold on. 

“What are you—” she says, but it’s fairly obvious what the answer is.

“Can I have a turn?” Jamie asks, and she tugs back far enough that they can look at each other. “It’s okay if you say no. I don’t want you to feel like you have to—” She shakes her head, closing her eyes for a moment. She’s still straddling Dani and, when her hips roll a little involuntarily, Dani can’t fight the moan that escapes. It makes Jamie’s eyes fly open again, fills them with delight and surprise and a mixture of the two so potent that Dani feels like she can’t breathe. “Okay?” she asks and Dani nods.

“Yeah, okay. Very okay.”

“Good. Because I don’t think I can leave without tasting you again.”

Dani doesn’t even have time to answer before the blankets are tugged down, exposing her bare body to the cold air, and Jamie’s mouth is trailing down her ribs and stomach.

When that hot breath is between her legs, she gasps out a soft, “Oh, my god,” followed by a low, “ _Holy fuck_ ,” when Jamie licks into her. She grips soft, brown hair in her fingers, tries not to buck up into the touch too much, tries to relax but finds that she’s fit to snap within seconds.

Jamie hardly has to do much of anything other than circle her tongue around Dani’s clit a few times, lap inside once or twice. Her rhythm is relentless despite the tired sort of feeling pervading the air around them. Dani gasps, muscles tightening and loosening again and again, bumping her head against the headboard as she writhes a little. Her mind an endless loop of _fuck_ and _fuck yes_ and _Jamie_. She shatters. There’s no other word for the way it happens, her head thrown back long and low moan releasing itself from the confines of her chest.

It lasts forever. Not time at all. Dani can’t even get herself to think clearly enough to kiss Jamie back in a way that isn’t _sloppy_ when she drifts back up. 

They lie together for a little while, kissing slowly as the world comes back into focus and color around them. The panic of _oh my god what am I doing_ hasn’t even had time to sink in when Jamie’s phone starts buzzing. 

Jamie jumps away quickly and fumbles it from the bedside table, turning away from Dani as she answers. 

Says, “Hannah, hey,” in this affectionate tone that makes something ugly rear its head in Dani’s veins. “No, yeah, I’m fine...Sorry. I keep runnin’ out on ya’...Yeah...Yeah, of course...Yeah...Okay. See you soon.” 

She hangs up then and gets to her feet, straightening her clothes before turning around to face Dani again. Over the course of the phone call, Dani had taken it upon herself to cover back up, her anxiety falling over her like a dark shroud.

“I should get going now,” Jamie says. “But...If you’d like, I can...I can call ya’? Maybe we can get dinner or something?”

Dani sort of wants to say no on the basic principle of the thing—the boldness that Jamie must have to take a call from another woman who certainly _seemed_ familiar just minutes after having sex with _her._ But that voice in the back of her head tells her to calm down. Take it easy.

She doesn’t own Jamie and whatever it is they’re doing is brand new and cannot, under any realistic circumstances, be _exclusive_ or even serious at all.

But she really does like her. Quite a lot, actually. A bit of a scary amount that’s confusing and dizzying because Dani is certain she’s never wanted anyone quite so much before. She wants Jamie, though. Wants whatever pieces of her she can be allowed.

“Yeah,” she says, holding the blankets close. “That would be nice.”

Jamie smiles at her and Dani’s tongue feels thick in her mouth. “Great.” She leans over and kisses Dani then—a goodbye kiss to be sure, but not a chaste one. Not a peck. 

No, this is deeper than that. 

So deep that Dani can taste the lingering traces of herself on Jamie’s tongue.

“Talk soon,” Jamie says, and _there’s_ the peck just before she pulls away.

“Yeah,” Dani agrees and she lies there in bed as Jamie waves from the doorway, as she disappears from view. Listens to the slam of the door and her footsteps heading down the stairs and _away_.

Keeps listening just in case, waiting for something that she can’t name.

_________

Jamie’s day goes pretty much exactly as she thought it would. It’s almost eleven o’clock by the time she pulls into the drive of the manor beneath the thickening clouds of gray in the sky. The wind is relentless and bitter, biting her all the way inside, and Hannah is right there as soon as she enters, catching Jamie off guard. 

She has a broom in her hands and it’s clear from the way she’s holding it that she’s only been _pretending_ to sweep as she waited for Jamie to arrive. And she’d sounded worried on the phone, but now she seems anything but. Instead, she seems almost pleased with herself, a self-satisfied little smirk twisting on her lips that Jamie sees so rarely that panic drops into the low of her stomach.

“There you are,” Hannah says. “I was beginning to worry we’d never see you again.”

Jamie rolls her eyes and shrugs off her coat. “I’ve been late before,” she says. “More than once.”

“Yes, but never _four_ hours late.”

She has a point. Jamie hangs her coat up and turns around, stuffing her hands into her pockets, trying her best to feign nonchalance. “Right, I just got...caught up with something and slept through my alarm.”

Hannah hums through thinned lips. “Oh, I’m sure.”

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what, dear?”

“Like you think you know something.”

“And what is it I might think I know?”

“Nothing. Because there’s nothing to know.”

She’s lying through her teeth and she knows that Hannah knows, because she’s an absolute _shit_ liar. And, anyway, anyone could see right through her probably because she can’t stop smiling which is almost certainly not a usual character trait. 

It’s like her heart is already trying to run away with her head and she can’t figure that out, but she knows it has nothing to do with her—or her dating history; how many times she’s been left behind; how many times she hasn’t been _enough_ —and everything to do with the open-palmed, blue-eyed Dani who touches her like _forever_ and kisses her like _please stay_.

There _is_ something to know. A big something.

But it’s still so new, so unmapped and uncertain, that Jamie isn’t sure how to bring it up and worries that saying it aloud might make it crumple to dust in her hands.

There’s a time limit—expiration date—on this whole thing and she’s aware of every other second that passes by, bringing them closer and closer to the inevitable collapse.

“She lives!” Owen calls from the doorway to the front hall. “And in the same clothes as yesterday. Have another sleepover you don’t want to talk about?”

“Oh, my god,” Jamie sighs. “Do you guys have anything going on in your own lives besides pestering me about mine?”

“Sure. Plenty.”

He bloody winks.

“I can’t stand you right now,” she decides, and pulls her coat off the rack to slip back on. “So I’m gonna go somewhere you’re not.”

Neither of them even tries to stop her. Owen is too busy laughing and Hannah is too busy scolding him half-heartedly.

_________

It doesn’t start as snooping. Not at first.

It starts with Dani burning the side of her finger on the scalding tea kettle during her sad attempt to make tea and needing a band-aid. The logical first place to check is the bathroom cabinets, but those are mostly empty save for various hair care products and some makeup. The drawers set into the counter are a bust, too. 

In the kitchen again, she finds out that Jamie has about four separate junk drawers, none of which have any sort of rhyme or reason to the things that are inside them. Various packages of batteries, a few box cutters, and a stack of old letters—some of which are unopened—that Dani, of course, does not read through. 

The does notice the name on the return address, sees Jamie’s last name followed by _Michael_. So a relative, then. 

Another drawer holds a few seal packages of cigarettes and a spare lighter, along with an old glasses case. 

None of them hold bandaids. 

At some point, she forgets she’s even looking for them, too busy drifting through the living room and glancing at some of the pictures on the walls. None of them are personal photos. Instead, they are all posters or postcards from various other places, unmarked and clearly bought by Jamie. The paintings that she has up look like they’ve been mass produced, but are pretty, featuring trees and wildlife or just clean, easy shapes and swipes of a paintbrush.

There’s a record player set up on a table beneath the living room window, a few crates of records below them. Blondie’s _Panic of Girls_ is resting directly beside the player and Dani runs a hand along the cover. The wax melter is shaped like an oil lantern and there’s a wooden poster of _The Creature from the Black Lagoon_ propped on the table, leaned back against the wall.

Somehow, she’d missed these things the day before. Some part of her didn’t stray too far from the familiar and easy, like she’s been afraid of leaving any lasting impression on her surroundings, but it feels different now. 

She’s surprised by how charmed she is at these little discoveries. At a cursory glance, Jamie doesn’t seem like the type of person who would own multiple copies of _Frozen_ , but apparently she is.

The table beside Jamie’s bed has three things on it: a lamp, a dog-eared copy of a book Dani’s never heard of, and an alarm clock. Too curious to stop herself now, Dani’s fingers find the knob of the drawer and she tugs it open. There’s a little, black cinch bag inside and she shouldn’t—some part of her recognizes this even as she ignores it—but she picks it up and pulls the strings to open it.

What she finds inside is _definitely_ not what she expected. Once her mind comprehends what it is she’s looking at, she drops it back into the drawer, feeling everything in her twist into a very tight knot. A barrage of images are spinning through her mind at a completely dizzying pace, all of them surprising and absolutely none of them family-friendly.

She slams the drawer shut and turns to leave the room.

In the hallway, as she leans against the wall—one hand on her chest as she tries to calm down her errant heart—her mind interprets a more comprehensive look she’d gotten of the drawer. It takes a moment to steel herself enough to return and retrieve the box of band-aids hidden in the drawer beneath the bag.

_________

Jamie is smoking a cigarette in the garden when her phone goes off in her free hand. The anticipation that’s been gripping her tight since she sent the message breaks like a wave over her chest and she fumbles to open Dani’s response.

 **Dani [2:12]** _I’d love to. Anywhere in particular you had in mind?_

Smoke burns at the roof of Jamie’s mouth, so she parts her lips and lets it drift out slowly. She shivers against the bright burst of wind that smacks her in the side of the face as she contemplates her response. 

There’s only about two restaurants in Bly and she’s never taken a date to either. Granted, there’s never been a date to _take_ in the time that she’s lived in town. Dani is the first, and that’s part of why it seems so dangerous to take her out like this, but it’s hard to stop something that’s already picking up speed as it rolls downhill.

She gives Dani the abbreviated version of her thought process and presses send before she can talk herself out of it.

Taking a few steps back, she looks up at the house as she waits—at her handiwork and the strands of lights strung around the balustrades, the doors, the low-hanging roof. It’s been three days of work and she’s only half-finished, but, even without the lights turned on, she knows that it looks good. Much better than last year, but then she’d been learning how to do it in the first place. 

She just hopes the Wingraves will find it satisfactory, and then, on Christmas Eve, their party guests. It may not be her favorite holiday, but Jamie would like to say she knows her way around a staple gun and some Christmas lights.

Her phone buzzes.

 **Dani [2:17]** _You choose. I’ll be happy anywhere._

 _As long as it’s with you,_ Jamie imagines the message ending.

She can practically hear it being said in Dani’s voice. 

Just one problem of too many to count.

_________

“You haven’t called. You haven’t texted. I’ve been worried sick thinking something terrible happened to you.”

“I’m _fine_ , Mom. I just...with the time difference and getting settled in, I kept forgetting.”

“You know how I worry, Dani.”

“I know, I know.”

On the screen of Dani’s phone, her mother frowns and tilts her head, pixelated and squinting like she’s trying to clean up her own screen’s resolution with her mind. Really, she’s looking for signs that Dani is anything but okay, but Dani can’t even bring herself to care. 

Now that she knows the way Jamie’s hair smells, the way her skin does, the way her clothes do, she can smell her everywhere. Her shampoo lingers on the sheets and the pillow she used the night before. The light scent of her perfume can be caught on the blanket Dani has draped over her waist if the air hits it just right.

It’s making it hard for her to keep her mind on track, as if she needed anymore difficulty there. She’s already been a little preoccupied with what she found in Jamie’s table in the hours since she made the discovery, and the last thing she needs to be thinking about while she’s Face-Timing her mother is being bent over the counter in the kitchen with Jamie pressed tightly against her from behind, thumbing Dani’s pants at the waist, tugging them down and sliding into her, making Dani sigh and moan and lean back into her as Jamie thrusts forward—

“Dani? This connection, I _swear_ —”

“What?” 

Her mother frowns and leans towards her camera, growing bigger and bigger on Dani’s screen. “I asked how you’re feeling,” she says. “Any thoughts about what you’re going to do when you get home?”

“Do about what?” 

Better to act ignorant than play right into her mother’s trap.

“You know, I heard from Eddie’s mother the other day. She said something about him wanting to talk to you.”

“If he wants to talk to me, he can do it on his own.”

Her mother gives her a serious look. “That’s unfair.”

And Dani sort of wants to scream something like _why_ —because _why_ is it unfair? Why is it ridiculous to want Eddie to actually reach out to her and stop playing the victim? They’re friends. They’ve known one another for most of their lives, and she hates not talking to him—she really does because, at the end of the day, he’s her best friend and she _loves_ him, even if it’s not in the way he wants—but it isn’t her responsibility to apologize.

Of course, she can’t say any of that.

She settles for saying, “Okay,” without an apology, which results in her mother’s eyes narrowing, like she’s trying to analyze her again. Feeling awkward, Dani looks at the time on her watch and decides to pretend it’s twenty minutes later than it actually is—that Jamie will be expecting her in about ten minutes and that she has to get ready.

“Hey, Mom, I have to go.” She checks her watch again for show. “I’m meeting someone for dinner and—”

“ _Danielle_ !” her mother practically screeches. Dani is confused for exactly as long as it takes to figure out that she’s looking at her neck. “Is that a...a _hickey?_ ”

“Um…” 

“Oh, my god, are you actually out on vacation, hooking up with the first man you can find, while Eddie is here wasting away for you?”

And despite the embarrassment, the _humiliation_ at being caught in such a strange position, Dani can’t help it: she rolls her eyes. “Mom, he’s hardly wasting away,” she says, but her mother doesn’t care.

“Who is he?”

Dani wants to laugh. She really does. 

She doesn’t.

She says, “There’s no _he_.”

Not a lie, per se, but her mother is still going. “It’s _Christmas_ and you’re in another country having sex with random men.”

“I’m not—”

“I’m here alone—”

“Mom.”

“—and Eddie is torturing himself over this whole mess—”

“ _Mom_.”

“—while my daughter falls into the bed with—”

“It’s a woman!” Dani nearly yells, throwing her hands up in a show of absolute exasperation. “It’s a woman and her name is Jamie and she’s not some random stranger I found on the street or-or...She’s a good person and it has nothing to do with you or Edmund or fucking Christmas or anything other than me _liking_ her so just—”

She cuts herself off. Realizes what it is she’s just said. Finally clocks the look on her mother’s face. Flushing with hot humiliation, she shuts her mouth with a _click_ of her teeth.

Her mother does a lovely impression of a fish out of water for a long time. Dani isn’t sure how long it goes on actually. She’s not sure which part of it that’s caught the conversation where it is, this freeze frame that she’s certain won’t ever end, but she thinks she goes through every stage of grief before making the decision to leave it where it is.

“Like I said, I have to go.” She lifts a finger to hover over the red end button. “I’ll talk to you later. Love you.”

She doesn’t even give her mom time to respond.

She just hangs up.

_________

Jamie is already seated and waiting when Dani arrives at the restaurant, wind-flushed and looking a little flustered. There’s a serious look on her face that Jamie doesn’t know her well enough to interpret, but she doesn’t even have to _try_ in order to notice how cute she is as she greets the hostess at the door. She says something and then lifts her head to look around, eyes wide and fervent until they spot Jamie at her table, lifting her hand in a wave.

Dani waves back.

She thanks the hostess and makes her way over, weaving between the tables and other guests until she reaches Jamie’s table. “I’m so sorry I’m late,” she says, unwrapping her scarf from her neck and then starting on the zipper of her coat. “My mom called and it was—” She puffs a breath out of air out through her mouth and shrugs her coat off, draping it over the back of her chair before sitting down. “Well, honestly, it was a bit of a disaster.”

Jamie frowns, leaning forward. “No worries,” she says. “Did you want to talk about it?”

For a moment, she thinks Dani is going to say no, but she doesn’t. Instead she just contemplates the question seriously before finally saying, “It’s nothing, really. I just had to...come out to her for about the third time.”

Like she really believes it _is_ nothing, Dani gives a little half-shrug, one shoulder lifting and lowering. She picks up her menu and opens it, giving it her attention, perhaps to hide whatever real emotion she doesn’t want to show.

“That doesn’t sound like nothing.”

Dani glances up, cheeks flushed from more than just the cold, and she goes to answer only to hesitate, like she’s rethinking her answer.

“No, it’s just...I think one of these days it’s bound to stick, right?”

She offers it up like it’s supposed to be a joke, but there’s real hurt in her eyes. Jamie’s never exactly been good at this sort of thing, but she decides to try anyway, reaching out a hand to cover one of Dani’s on the table. 

“I’m sorry,” she offers. “It’s brave of you to keep trying.”

This seems to catch Dani off guard, like she’s never really been told she’s brave or even capable of being so. Astonishment melts into something more fond, and then she shifts her hand to lace her fingers with Jamie’s and squeeze. 

“Thank you,” she says softly.

Jamie simply nods.

They both turn their attention to their menus again, though Dani will occasionally lift her head to look around at the restaurant. It’s a nice place, simple and familiar. Wooden floors and tables, people laughing and talking over their meals and a Christmas tree in the corner, decorated with LED lights that give a little bit of a show—flicking on and off in sections, in rhythm—and provided a bit of a distraction.

There’s a painting in the wall of Santa, holding his fingers up to his lips as he stares directly forward. He’s stepping out of someone’s chimney and there’s a child asleep on the floor at his feet, his bag of presents slung over his shoulder. It’s cheesy and ridiculous and Jamie sort of hates it, but she loves the way it makes Dani laugh.

“What?” she asks, eyeing the side of Dani’s face, her lips curved into a smile, eyes filled with mirth as she turns around. 

“Nothing,” Dani says. “It’s just...who is he _shushing_?”

Jamie doesn’t know. Says as much around a laugh.

“I have to say, their tree would be a lot more festive if it was pink,” she says next and Jamie frowns, confused, trying to understand the joke. Dani seems to sense her bewilderment. “Like yours,” she clarifies.

The memory of the tree Rebecca bought and decorated for her flat just before leaving comes to her. She makes a face like _ah, yes_ , and says, “Right, yeah. I forgot.”

“You forgot about your Christmas tree?”

“It’s not mine,” Jamie tells her, but then it’s Dani’s turn to be confused and she has to rush on to explain. “Technically, yeah, it is. It’s in my flat. But Rebecca bought it before she left to make the place seem a bit more...merry or something.”

“You didn’t have a Christmas tree of your own?” Dani asks, though she doesn’t sound accusatory. She just sounds curious.

Before Jamie can offer an answer, the waiter comes over and interrupts them, asking after their orders. Once he’s gone, she squeezes Dani’s hand and draws her attention back.

“I’m not a big fan of the holiday. Never really went well for me.”

“Oh.” Dani frowns. “That’s too bad.”

Jamie shrugs. “I guess so.”

“Is that...You don’t celebrate it with your family or…?”

“No family to speak of.” Her voice is flip, though the information is certainly heavy and not exactly a breezy topic for a dinner date. “Well...I have brothers, but we don’t...really talk. And our dad’s been dead a few years now. Mom ran off when I was seven.”

It’s strange how easily she says it, like it’s nothing big. The kind of thing she shares with just about everyone but, in reality, she’s never really told anyone about her childhood before. There’s never really been anyone to tell. But it’s so easy to share it all with Dani and she wonders if it has anything to do with the knowledge that she’ll be leaving soon—returning to her own life far away and taking Jamie’s secrets with her. 

There’s still some part of her that wants to run very far away at the confession, but Dani’s hand steadies her. Connects her to the solid ground and keeps her from flying away.

“I’m...God, Jamie, I’m sorry,” Dani says after clearing her throat. “I shouldn’t have just—”

“It’s okay. Not like you could have known.”

Dani’s big, blue eyes stare into Jamie’s own and Jamie has the vague feeling that she’s being memorized. Before she can ask about it, the waiter returns with their drinks and breaks the spell.

“What about you?” Jamie asks once he’s gone, giving Dani’s hand another squeeze. “Your mom sounds like she might be a pill, but I don’t like to assume.”

It’s a joke that could possibly land the wrong way given a particular audience, but Dani giggles and takes it in stride. She even nods in agreement.

“Yeah, um...They were good. Modest,” she says. She takes a drink from her water. “My dad died when I was...about nine, so it’s been just me and my mom for a while.”

“I’m sorry.”

Dani gives her a sad smile. “Me, too.” 

This settles in the air between them for a moment or two, the sound of other conversations buzzing along with it, the clinking of silverware against plates and bowls and the wind pressing hard against the side of the building.

Usually, Jamie has difficulty keeping her hands warm in the winter, but Dani’s hand feels like the perfect temperature in hers, her body heat pressing against the ever-present chill in Jamie’s bones. They work like this, the two of them. It feels _correct_ somehow, and Jamie realizes quite suddenly that she’d been missing this feeling with every other girl she’s ever tried with.

“Wow, um...This is really cheery dinner conversation, huh?” Dani says after a little while, knocking Jamie from her deeper thoughts. “Great job, Dani.”

“It’s fine,” Jamie tells her. 

“No, really. I’m probably the worst date and—”

“Oh, you are not.” She says it quickly, and then rushes on before Dani can be given any room to argue or deny it. “I’m having a pretty good time. I was hoping you were, too.”

Dani blushes, tapping the fingers of her free hand against the top of their table. “Oh...Yeah, I am. Of course I am.” 

Jamie smiles. “Good.”

Their food arrives a little later, when they’re lost in an easier conversation about favorite holidays and other interests. Dani talks for a little while about her impressions of England and Bly. Jamie laughs at her stories about America. 

It’s strange, how simple everything is with Dani. This is what she’s been missing in the past and she thinks that maybe this is why she always thought relationships were too much work. With everyone else, they seemed like they _were_. But, with Dani, she thinks it could feel as easy as breathing.

Around the time they’re finishing their food, Jamie’s phone starts vibrating in her pocket and she has to pull her hand away from Dani’s for the first time all evening in order to pull it from her pocket. Her screen is lit up with an incoming call from Henry Wingrave and she holds up an apologetic finger to Dani, who makes a face like _go ahead_ , before answering.

“Hello?” she answers, and she’s expecting Henry’s somber voice.

Instead, she gets a loud and excited, “Jamie!” from someone else.

“Flora, hey,” she greets. “How are you, love?”

Across the table, Dani’s shoulders stiffen and she looks away very deliberately.

“Oh, I’m perfectly _splendid_ ,” Flora answers and Jamie can’t help but laugh, which makes Dani glance up and then quickly away again. “We’re almost there! It was supposed to be a surprise, but I couldn’t wait!”

“You’re almost where?” Jamie asks, affection for the little girl slipping into her Dani-addled mind. “To the manor?”

She can practically hear Flora nodding. “Yes! Uncle Henry decided we should come down early to get ready for the party. And since Miss Jessel is away, I wanted to call and tell you!”

“Well, that is exciting, isn’t it?”

“Very! Will you come see us tonight?”

“Of course, I will. Like I could say no to that.”

Flora giggles, this happy noise, and then Miles voice can be heard a little distantly, saying something Jamie can’t understand. “Jamie, Miles wants me to hang up so he can play his silly game again.”

“That’s fine. We’ll see each other soon, won’t we?”

“Yes!”

“So you can let Miles play his game.”

“Okay. Bye, Jamie!”

“Bye, Flora.”

Jamie hangs up and stares at her phone for a beat, lining up the information Flora’s just dumped mentally so that it makes sense. Henry is coming with the children early for the party. They’ll be at the manor soon. 

When she looks up again, Dani is very pointedly _not_ looking at her. The set of her shoulders is a little stiff, like she’s unhappy or upset or something and Jamie can’t think of why—can’t decide if it has anything to do with her. 

Still, she says, “Sorry,” just in case.

Dani glances up and there’s hurt there in her eyes that Jamie doesn’t understand. “It’s okay,” she says. “You’re a busy gal.”

The last bit has a bite to it. Jamie winces.

“Not really.” 

Dani hums and doesn’t answer verbally.

“I feel like I did something wrong here,” Jamie says, deciding that honesty is probably the best route here. The last thing she wants to do is mess this up before it’s even had a chance to begin. “But I don’t know what.”

“It’s nothing.”

“It must be. Or it wouldn’t be upsetting you.”

Finally, Dani meets her eyes more fully, a frown on her lips that makes Jamie’s heart catch in her chest. “You just...I know that we’re not...and maybe it’s silly of me, but you, um...It certainly seems like you...get around a lot.”

Now Jamie’s the one frowning. “What do you mean?”

Dani’s expression flickers. “Just...with the phone call this morning with _Hannah_ and now with _Flora._ You just seem pretty popular and it’s none of my business but—”

“Wait,” Jamie cuts in, feeling completely blanched of color, though she can’t see herself. “Hannah and…” She laughs, too shocked to realize how it might be taken.

At once, Dani’s expression becomes more than a little hurt and just a bit angry. “I thought we were...But if you’re going to—”

She looks like she’s about two seconds from storming out of the place, so Jamie reaches out and catches her hand again to stop her. Rushes to say, “No, Dani, it’s...it’s not like that. There’s no one…” 

_There’s no one else_ seems like too much for some reason.

Instead, she settles on:

“It’s just you.”

Which, on second thought, seems like _way_ more.

Dani must think so, too, because she stops breathing, but she doesn’t speak which is probably worse than her saying literally anything at all, even if it’s negative. The worst part is that Jamie can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

It could be _either_.

She thinks quickly, which isn’t usually one of her strong suits, but there’s an easier fix to this than saying something that could potentially make Dani run just like all the others.

Make her disappear and shatter whatever illusion it is that Jamie’s been blissfully lucky to exist in for the last two days.

“Do you want to…” She shakes her head, deciding to rephrase that into something that won’t necessarily require Dani to give a verbal response. She checks out their receipt and pulls enough money from her pocket to pay it and then gets to her feet, offering out a hand. “Come on. There’s some people you should meet.”

And Dani may not say anything, but she takes Jamie’s hand and it’s the small victories, really, that count.

_________

“Wait, _this_ is where you work?”

Dani leans forward in seat so she can peek out the windshield to see a little more clearly. The manor certainly is a sight, Jamie has to admit, especially when you’re first seeing it, so she can’t exactly fault Dani for her wide-eyed wonder as she takes in the whole of the structure, the lights Jamie’s broken her back putting up, and, yeah.

It’s possibly the most adorable she’s ever looked.

Jamie throws her car in park beside Henry’s silver Mercedes and turns it off, tucking her keys into her pocket. “Yeah, it is. Spent a ridiculous amount of time on those lights, too.” 

“You put those up?” Dani asks and Jamie nods proudly. “Wow, I can barely hang a picture on the wall.” 

“Give me a call next time and I’ll take care of ya’.”

The joke nips a bit at the understanding that she couldn’t exactly _help_ even if Dani did call the next time she ran into trouble like that. Instead of letting it linger, Jamie gets out of the car and then crosses over to get Dani’s door and help her out, too. 

“Come’re,” she says, and offers her hand again.

Dani takes it without hesitating this time, slipping her fingers between Jamie’s like she’s done it hundreds of times before. She lets herself be led to the front doors and then inside the house. Her open-mouthed awe only gets worse once she sees the size of the inside—the curving stairs and the large portraits. The ornate ceilings and carefully dusted light fixtures and the large rug spread out and meticulously vacuumed.

“Okay, double wow,” Dani breathes. “This place is beautiful.” 

“It does alright,” Jamie teases and Dani elbows her, smiling happily.

Before they can settle any further into the moment there’s a loud yell and a blur of something before Jamie is nearly being knocked off her feet to a squeal of her name.

“Jeez, kid, take it easy,” she jokes, laughing breathlessly as she reaches down to pull Flora into a hug. 

“Hi, Jamie,” the girl greets, her arms tight around Jamie’s waist. “I missed you so much! But now we’re together again and we can watch Christmas movies and eat cookies and make hot chocolate and—” Her rant comes to a sudden halt when she sees Dani standing there just beside Jamie and it’s obvious from her look of utter enchantment and fascination that they’re going to get along. 

“Flora, this is my friend Dani,” Jamie says and Flora releases her, stepping back so she can hold out a hand for Dani to shake.

Dani does, a little bemused. “So _you’re_ Flora,” she says, throwing Jamie a look. “It’s lovely to meet you.”

“You, too!” Flora crows. “Jamie _never_ brings friends for us to meet and you’re so _pretty_ and I like your hair. Do you know how to braid? Do you think I could braid your hair? Oh, I think it would look just _splendid_ with braids—”

Jamie puts a hand on her shoulder. “Flora,” she says, “breathe.”

Flora makes an exaggerated show of doing just that. She has yet to let go of Dani’s hand and Jamie isn’t even surprised. Mostly, she’s just relieved by the fact that Dani doesn’t look hurt anymore or suspicious. She just looks...comforted.

“Jamie!” another voice calls, and then Miles is there. He’s a year too old for hugs now, but he lets Jamie ruffle his hair a little. “Who’s your friend?”

“This is Dani!” Flora tells him. “And she’s perfectly—”

“Well, what do we have here?” Hannah asks, appearing in the doorway to the sitting room. She gives Dani her brightest, whitest smile and drifts over to offer her own hand. 

“Oh.” Dani actually looks a bit overwhelmed now, but she shakes Hannah’s hand all the same. “I’m, um…”

“This is Dani,” Jamie cuts in. “She’s the one who—”

Hannah nods like she didn’t already know that. “Of course. Jamie’s told us a lot about you.”

Dani throws a surprised look Jamie’s way as if to ask if this is true. Jamie doesn’t look at her. She just glares at Hannah.

“Dani, this is Hannah,” she says, teeth gritted a little, “who is on her way to make sure Flora and Miles get settled.”

It takes Hannah a moment to catch on, but, by some miracle, she does. “Yes, of course. Come along, dears.”

Flora almost protests, but she seems to know better. She lets go of Dani’s hand with a polite and cheerful, “Lovely to meet you!” and gives Jamie another firm hug on her way out. Miles throws Dani a wave and a smile and Hannah gives Jamie what is probably supposed to be a “knowing” look, but Jamie ignores her.

“Sorry about that,” she says once they’re gone. “They’re usually not so...much.”

Dani shakes her head. “No, they’re...They seem great.”

“They are.”

They stand there, looking at one another, and Dani bites her lip. Before Jamie can jump in and explain the situation any further, Dani says, “I’m sorry.”

Then: “I shouldn’t have...I just thought that…”

Jamie holds up a hand to stop her. “It’s okay. Really. I get it.” 

Dani breathes a little easier. “Thank you.”

“But...I meant it when I said it’s just you.”

At the way Dani is looking at her, Jamie’s heart rate picks up. “Yeah?” she asks.

And Jamie nods. Can’t lie. Doesn’t want to. 

More than anyone she’s ever known, she thinks Dani deserves the honest truth. And that’s what she gives when she says: “Yes.”

..


	3. three musketeers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so sorry for the delay! got sidetracked with Christmas things and WW84 soooo...
> 
> here you go! only two more chapters, i think, so have some more Flora and Miles fluff.

“Wait,” Jamie says, in a voice that betrays her complete bafflement, “why is he the only elf with hair?”

“The elf coach has hair,” says Dani, amused: she’s sitting on the floor, cross-legged and leaned back against the couch between Jamie’s legs while she helps Flora and Miles thread popcorn onto a long strand of thread. “It’s a goatee, but that definitely counts.”

She nods to the screen where Hermey is currently being yelled at for missing elf practice. Jamie shifts her right leg and bumps it against Dani’s shoulders, too distracted by the movie to even notice. Tilting her head back, she manages to catch a glimpse of Jamie’s expression, which is just as bewildered as her question had been. 

This is their second movie of the night, the first slot having been given, rather excitedly, to _Santa Claus is Coming to Town_. Although Jamie claims to have seen both movies on TV as a child, her ceaseless look of fascination implies otherwise. Even Hannah and Owen, who have only been drifting in and out, seem to find it strange and as adorable as Dani does.

“He’s blond, though,” Jamie says. “He’s the only boy elf with blond hair.”

“I think it’s so he stands out a little more.”

“Like the dentist thing doesn’t do that already.”

“Well,” Dani says, “wanting to be a dentist isn’t visual enough.”

Jamie sighs, her fingers brushing the back of Dani’s skull, slipping into her hair and brushing down the nape of her neck. Dani resists the urge to response as she wants to—to _moan_ openly because _if there weren’t children present_ —

But there are. So she stays silent and takes each piece of popcorn from Flora obediently, listening to the little girl chatter happily to her brother. They’re almost out, he is saying. But the garland should be long enough. Flora doesn’t necessarily agree. She would probably keep going until a string of popcorn as long as the house was lying on their laps. 

“Flora, you’re making me hungry,” Jamie says, and the little girl lifts her eyes to frown in confusion. “When can I eat that?”

Flora’s face lights up joyfully. “You can’t eat it, Jamie!” she crows. “It’s for the tree.”

“Watch me.” Jamie leans down beside Dani and makes an exaggerated grab for the popcorn garland, moving slowly enough that Flora has time to yank it out of reach. “Give it here,” she says, but Flora shakes her head and holds it away, giggling as Jamie grabs for her and hauls her—just like that—onto the couch, digging her fingers into Flora’s sides and tickling her as she tries to fight her off, chanting: _no no no stop it Jamie!_

On the floor beside the short table, Miles watches with a smile on his face. He catches Dani’s eyes and rolls them like he’s ten years older than he actually is and he’s in on the ridiculousness of the whole thing.

On the TV, Hermey and Rudolph are singing about being misfits and Dani basks in the warmth of the ease, the familiarity, pressing down on the air of the room. She thinks of Jamie’s family, her childhood—what she knows of it at least—and marvels at the way she is with these children; the way she is with Owen and Hannah and how she speaks of Rebecca.

 _No family to speak of,_ she’d said, but here she is, proving the opposite.

_________

Dani takes the empty popcorn bowls into the kitchen and leaves Jamie alone with the children. At once, their eyes are on her, sizing her up. Jamie looks at each of them in turn.

“Do you like her very much, Jamie?” Flora asks, full of light and hope that makes Jamie feel like her chest could crack in two.

“I do,” Miles says, frowning like the serious little boy that he is. “And she actually likes your jokes.”

Jamie gasps in faux hurt. “My jokes are funny.”

“Sometimes.” Jamie reaches around Flora to dig her fingers into Miles’s side and he squirms away, grinning fire-lit and easy. “Is she going to come by more often?” is his next question.

“Actually,” Jamie begins, “she’s only here for Christmas.”

“Oh, no!” 

It’s incredible how quickly Flora can be found on the verge of tears. Jamie wraps an arm around her and pulls her into a sitting hug on the couch.

Even Miles frowns. “That’s too bad,” he says.

“Yeah,” Jamie agrees. “It is. But I still have you two, right? More than I need.”

The children are charmed by this—Jamie was not always so openly affectionate and this has been hard-won. Flora leans her little head against Jamie’s side and, when Jamie ruffles Miles hair with the hand she has thrown over the back of the couch, he gives her another smile. 

“Who does Dani have?” Flora asks, and, just like that, the mood is as stumped as Jamie. 

A million things press into Jamie’s mind. Too many for her to sort through. There’s a whole life waiting for Dani in America, one that Jamie only knows pieces of. She has a job and a family and a friend who proposed to her. She has so many things that Jamie has never seen or experienced and never will. Once she goes back to those things, Dani will be gone, and she’s been trying really, really hard not to think about that, but it’s like she can’t _not_ anymore.

Not even with warm, little Flora pressed into her, the soft knit sweater Mile’s is wearing beneath the flat of her palm. 

“She has people for her back in America,” Jamie explains, but she doesn’t let that linger for very long. “But...until she goes back to them, she can have us, can’t she?”

Flora likes that idea. She sits up to meet Jamie’s eyes, rearing back so much as she nods emphatically that she presses into Miles to do it. “Oh, yes, yes, yes,” she agrees. “We can decorate the tree together and build a snowman—”

“There’s no snow,” Miles cuts in, looking amused.

“—and braid each other’s hair!” 

“Sure, sure,” Jamie says between laughs, and then Flora gasps like something very important has only just occurred to her.

“Jamie!” she gasps. “She can come to Uncle’s party! Can she come to Uncle’s party? Oh, it will be so much fun! Say you’ll ask her!” She looks at Jamie for assurance, wonder-eyed and earnest and Jamie doesn’t think she can deny her a thing she’s asked for when she looks like that.

“I will,” she says, “I promise.” 

She means it. Just like that. Can’t consider doing anything else.

_________

The fridge has milk and heavy whipping cream. The cabinet has chocolate chips and a good-sized pot. Owen hands Dani a whisk and hovers just over her shoulder as she works quickly and easily.

“Huh,” he says. “Can’t say I’ve ever let anyone take over my kitchen before.”

“If her hot chocolate is any better than yours, dear,” Hannah says, “it may be the kind of thing you need to get used to.”

Dani laughs to herself, feeling like she’s already known the people of this house for years. In the living room, she hears the children chattering excitedly to an even-voiced Jamie. Fifteen minutes pass and Hannah retrieves six mugs from a different cabinet. Dani pours hot chocolate into each of them, smiling at the look of delighted surprise on Owen’s face, and hopes she is making a good impression, proving herself well— _deserving_ , perhaps, of their Jamie, who is sauntering into the kitchen, now, with the children at her heels.

Asking, “What’s going on in here?” 

“It appears Owen’s hot-chocolate-making skills are finally being challenged,” Hannah explains, and Flora claps her hands excitedly beside her bemused brother.

“Oh, can we have some?” she asks.

Dani picks up two of the full mugs and carries them over to the children, setting them down on the counter before them. “Of course you can,” she says. “But it’s really hot so be careful.”

“It’s not a mix is it?” Miles asks, wrinkling his nose.

Dani laughs. “Not a mix.”

“Good.” 

He and Flora grab their mugs and start blowing on them periodically, trying to cool them down. Across the counter, Owen is doing the same, but a bit more fervently, eager to see if he’s been outdone. 

“Not getting our hopes up for nothing, are ya’, Poppins?” Jamie asks. She comes around the counter to stand beside Dani, bumping their shoulders together as they shuffle to face one another.

“Poppins?” Dani asks.

Jamie shrugs. “Good with kids. Flew here. Perfect in every way.”

Dani feels her cheeks heat up. She hides it behind a well-timed sip from her own mug, not even caring that she burns the tip of her tongue a little. Better to blame her flushed complexion on that than on the way Jamie’s eyes trace her face as she compliments her. “ _Practically_ perfect,” she corrects once she swallows.

Another shrug. “Same thing.”

“Alright, that’s it. I hang up my hat,” Owen says, shaking his head in defeat. “You’ve outdone yourself,” he tells Dani. “I’ll never use a mix again.”

“Are you magical?” Miles asks, his eyes just as awe-filled as Owens. There’s a bit of a chocolate stain on his lips. 

“Not that I know of,” Dani says.

“This is delicious!” Flora exclaims, taking an enthusiastic drink from her mug. Her chocolate mustache is much worse than her brother’s, so Jamie reaches out and rubs at her lip with the sleeve of her shirt. As she does, Flora leans into it obediently, apparently used to being taken care of by Jamie in this way. 

Something about that catches in Dani’s chest. When Jamie goes to do the same to Miles, he doesn’t even pull away, though he certainly looks like the type of boy that might. There’s a trust they have with Jamie that’s evident in every passing moment they spend together. Some sort of understanding that they’ve reached, like each of them has lost something that the other(s) are happy to fill.

“I’m glad you guys like it,” Dani says next. She takes another sip of her drink, hiding the thrill of pride in her smile this time. 

“You’ll have to make more,” Owen tells her, so matter-of-fact about it. “If I let you leave without learning your ways, I’ll never hear the end of it from this lot.”

It’s as Dani is agreeing ( _Of course, yeah, it’s easy_ —) gentle, familiar fingers curl around her mug atop her own. Jamie is watching her with a cheeky grin, gently pulling on Dani’s grip, trying to pull the mug away. 

“Wanna see what all the fuss is about,” she says, and Dani pretends to gawk at her. 

“I poured you a mug already,” she says, nodding to the only untouched mug on the counter. “This one’s mine.”

“Sure, but it’s closer.”

“What if I have cooties?”

Jamie quirks an eyebrow. “Then I reckon you already gave ’em to me, yeah?”

So Danie relents, only half-kidding anyway and feeling much too _bothered_ by that comment to argue any further. She lets Jamie take her mug and watches as she takes a long pull, eyes falling down the way her jaw looks tipped back like that. Imagines brushing her lips along the skin there, sucking a mark into the soft of her neck. She’s been thinking about it all day, but it’s funny how strongly it _hits_ then when they’re in the presence of so many others.

When Jamie finishes drinking, she lowers the mug down with a thoughtful look on her face. Given how big a deal she’s made out of the whole thing, the others are watching her carefully, waiting for her to give them her thoughts, as if her opinion will be able to sway them enough to redact their own. But Jamie is a teasing thing ( _fingertips brushing against the inside of Dani’s thighs, a wink thrown here and there, the way she pulls her lip between her bottom teeth when she knows Dani is watching her_ ) and she clearly can’t resist hyping up the suspense.

Finally, she says, “Owen,” as she gives him a serious look and then: “You’re fired.”

Owen laughs riotously and then Jamie does too, handing Dani her hot chocolate back and wrapping her arm around her right there in front of everyone. Dani can’t help it: she leans in, wrapping one of her own arms around Jamie and pressing a kiss to her shoulder because why shouldn’t she?

She only has so much time that she can make the most of. Fortunately, the others are a little too distracted jibing Owen to notice—all save for Jamie, who glances over at her as she retreats. Restless fingers brush over Dani’s hip absently, her face fresh and lovely, curled towards Dani like she was made to be.

Dramatically, Dani can’t help but wonder if she was.

“You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?” Jamie asks, an edge of joking on the question.

Dani smiles. “Guess so.”

A kiss on her forehead, an arm pulling her closer. The laughter of people who don’t belong to her filling the room, but the warmth of someone who belongs to _them_ spreading into her skin through her clothes.

Someone she wishes could belong to her too.

_________

It’s _preposterously_ adorable the way Flora hugs Dani around the middle before going to bed that night. There was a long time after their parents’ accident where neither Miles nor Flora were too taken with strangers or anyone unfamiliar. It seeped into their respective schools and the lives they led there, forcing Henry to make the decision to have them live at the manor, to hire Rebecca to teach them until they were ready to face the world again. Even with Rebecca, it had been months before they warmed up to her all the way. 

Jamie sometimes counts herself among the blessed to have met both of them in the months before the accident. They were just children then—free and silly—and Flora took to her immediately, following her around like a lost puppy with those doe eyes, always asking for her help with little things. Miles did much of the same, but a bit differently. Instead of just hanging around for attention as obviously as his sister did, he insisted on assisting Jamie with her work however he could that first wet spring she’d worked at the house.

So she’s fairly used to their warm hugs, even if she, at one time, might have squirmed away from them or kept them from going on too long. It’s something else to see it happen to someone else, especially Dani. 

“You’ll come back soon, right?” Flora asks, her voice muffled by the fabric of Dani’s sweater. 

At the question, Dani catches Jamie’s eye, looking a little moonstruck by Flora’s unusual tenacity. “Yeah, of course I will,” she answers and Flora seems pleased at this, pulling away from the hug with a happy smile. 

“Jamie has to ask you something. Something important,” Flora whispers poorly, the hand she has cupped around her mouth doing nothing but amplify her voice. “Make sure she asks it.”

Dani looks like she has questions, but she doesn’t ask them. She just says, “Okay. I will.”

Flora says goodnight—another quick hug—and Miles gives a happy wave and then Hannah is ushering them up the stairs to bed. Jamie watches them go, cursing Flora beneath her breath for setting the tension in the air so high before leaving and making the whole thing feel like a big deal, though it isn’t. 

It’s just a silly party and she’s only asking Dani if she wants to come. She has a feeling that Dani will say yes, can’t imagine she’d say no, actually, so there’s no real need to be nervous. But she is, all the same.

She can feel Dani watching her, but she’s careful not to look. Not quite yet. Not until after she says, “I can give you a lift back if ya’ like.”

When she finally turns, Dani nods, that lovely, little smile on her pretty lips. “I’d love that,” she says and, when Jamie holds out her hand, Dani doesn’t hesitate to take it. 

It feels easy like this: just the two of them. Like they’ve had lifetimes to learn rather than just a couple of days. Dani slots so perfectly into the spaces of Jamie’s life that she can’t even consider what it will be like for them to be left empty again. If Dani will carve out an even bigger space on her way out, one that Jamie won’t ever be able to fill back in with anyone or anything.

 _Don’t think about it_.

She thinks about something else. About the way Dani looked in the white lights of the garland wrapping around the stair railings. How she teared up at the end of _Rudolph_ and the way her lipstick tasted on the edge of the mug they shared in the kitchen. Spread naked on the sheets of Jamie’s bed the night before, face turned towards Jamie’s with a delighted laugh in her chest at something ridiculous Jamie said that wasn’t funny. The mark she left on Jamie’s shoulder, the exact shape of her mouth and the bruises from her fingers on Jamie’s hips. 

“Tell me we didn’t bore you to death,” Jamie says as they step out into the bitter cold air waiting for them outside.

“You didn’t bore me to death. I had a good time.” Dani leans into Jamie’s side a little more, bringing her free hand out to rest on the hand of Jamie’s that she’s already holding. “I think I’m in love with your life here.”

The wind rustles in the bare branches of the trees across the yard, the moon breaking in through the silver-white clouds in the sky. Jamie’s heart beats hot like a brand in her chest.

“How’s that?” she asks, afraid of the answer.

“It’s just,” Dani says, gravel crunching underfoot; oblivious to the way her words rattle in Jamie’s chest and lungs. “You have this...amazing little family here and...your flat and friends and a job you care about _so much_. It just feels like a storybook. It would be so easy to lose myself here, I think.”

Jamie can’t say how much she _wants_ for that to happen.

 _Don’t leave me here alone_ , Jamie doesn’t say.

“It’s not so perfect,” Jamie _does_ say.

Dani glances at her. “No. Not perfect for everyone. But for you. You’re happy. You deserve to be happy and I don’t know how much you believe that. So...I don’t know, it’s nice to know that, even if you won’t acknowledge it, the _world_ gave you this life that you deserve to have.”

They’re at Jamie’s truck now and Dani pulls away a little so they can face each other properly. Given the chill of the air, the house lit up in the windows behind her, and the way the cold has begun to bite at Dani’s nose and cheeks, Jamie almost feels like she’s in some cheesy rom-com. Wonders if she’s hit her head or something and all of this is just one elaborate dream, showing her a life she cannot keep, a _woman_ who cannot stay.

But Dani is real enough and solid when Jamie leans in and kisses her. Jamie is so struck by the desire to do so that she forgets to ask for permission, but she thinks she finds it in the flick of Dani’s tongue against her teeth—the way Dani curls an arm up Jamie’s back and hauls her in. 

“You deserve a good life, too,” Jamie says when she pulls away and it really feels like they’re talking about something else, but she can’t guess at _what_. She brushes a strand of blonde hair from Dani’s face, lifting her other hand to rest against the flat of Dani’s sternum, right above her heart. 

“I have one.”

It’s not convincing, but Jamie doesn’t know how to say that.

She just says, “Okay.”

Dani cradles Jamie’s cheek, brushing her thumb along the line of her lips; some new touch that feels like an old habit. “Besides,” she says, “I can always share yours for a little bit. Right?”

Jamie nods. Says, “Yeah. Of course,” with a wistful voice and becomes lost in another kiss before the words have even fallen fully from her lips.

And, later—when they’re kissing against the door to Jamie’s flat, Dani whispers, “Stay the night,” into her mouth like she’s saying a prayer. Making a wish that she’s really hoping some higher power might be able to grant. 

Under normal circumstances, Jamie would take a step back. She would be scared of how quickly the whole thing is developing—how _fast_ she’s becoming so attached—and would try to put some distance between them. As much as she can bear, at least.

She would say something about there being other nights for this. That they have all the time in the world.

But there _won’t_ be other nights. Not many of them. And the worst part about Dani is that she can’t promise any more time than what they already have. 

Jamie does _not_ say that.

Instead, she nods breathlessly against the side of Dani’s face, kisses the side of her neck and sinks her teeth in a little as Dani fumbles the door open. Inside, she pushes Dani’s coat from her shoulders, tugs her sweater over her head, and presses her against the inside of the door to shut it. 

And Dani whispers her name, tries to get enough purchase to start on Jamie’s clothes, but only manages to drop Jamie’s coat to the floor before Jamie is sinking to her knees in front of her. Belt buckle undone, jeans unzipped and hauled down her thighs, Dani spreads her legs obediently and Jamie kisses her navel, her bellybutton, the sharp bones of her hips. Drags her blunt nails up and down the back of Dani’s thighs and slips her panties down to her knees. Looks up just long enough to make eye contact—to see Dani, blue-eyed and parted lips and _whimpering_ —before she licks into her, strong and steady. 

Jamie holds her upright by sheer _willpower_ , even as Dani’s legs threaten to buckle, cupping her backside in both hands to get a better angle, to wrap her lips around Dani’s clit and make her positively _sob_ as she comes into Jamie’s mouth. 

There aren’t other nights for this and so Jamie refrains from wiping her hand clean, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She makes Dani look at her as she sticks her fingers into her mouth, licking them clean and smirking as Dani makes this _noise_ before hauling her up by the arm and pulling her into the bedroom, her jeans still slung low around her hips as they go.

They have tonight. Maybe they have tomorrow. But there are no promises and Jamie—sitting on the edge of the bed with Dani kneeling before her, head bobbing up and down between Jamie’s thighs as she mimics her earlier actions—knows it in the very heart of her. Knows it better than she thinks she’s ever known anything.

But. The light from the streetlights outside angling in through the window, the _obscene_ noises Dani’s mouth and lips make as she licks and sucks and _doesn’t stop_ —and grips the edge of the bed in her fist and forces herself not to float away, thinking: _yes okay tonight_ and tomorrow and _i will never ask for anything else, i will never want more than what i have right now,_ **_please_ ** _._

_________

The next morning, the ground outside is covered in puffs of white snow. Dani stares out at it from the window, where she’s wrapped in a blanket from the bed, as she waits for Jamie to wake up. She’s drawing something in the frost on the window with the tip of her forefinger—buildings and street lamps and cars. 

Past the drawing, there are no cars to speak of, no foot or handprints to break up the cloudy surfaces. Jamie’s truck is almost unrecognizable beneath its icy blanket in the parking lot of the pub. This close to the window, Dani can feel the slip of a draft leaking in through the old panes of glass, but she only shivers and hugs the blanket tighter. When she was younger, the first snow of Christmas was the most magical day of the year, made all the more magic if school ended up cancelled because of it. Her and Eddie would spend hours outside, digging tunnels and eating handfuls right off the top, making abnormally shaped snowmen and pretending they were exploring the tundra together. 

Some part of her still speaks to the desire that lingers to do that again. She imagines dragging Jamie out of bed and bundling her up so they can go outside, catch the snow in gloved hands and recreate all those silly childhood memories together. Not for the first time since meeting her, Dani wonders what it might have been like if her and Jamie had found each other as children. She wonders if either of them would be more whole today for it, then tells herself she’s being dramatic.

Behind her, the bed creaks and the blankets stir as Jamie wakes up, humming sleepily. Dani stops drawing turns to see the other woman reach out across the bed with a curious palm, only to be met with cold, empty air. Her eyes crack open and she frowns in confusion for a moment before turning her eyes elsewhere and finding Dani standing there at the window.

“G’morning,” she says softly and Dani smiles at her. “Come back to bed. It’s freezing.”

“Come here first,” Dani tells her.

“No way.”

“Yes way. You have to see something.”

Jamie’s eyes narrow. “I see something already,” she says, nodding towards Dani herself. “And I want it in bed with me.”

Dani laughs. “So I’m an ‘it’?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah. I do.” Peeking one of her hands out of the side of the blanket she has draped around her body, Dani offers it out to Jamie and gives her a little wave to come nearer. “Seriously.”

It’s a bit of a shuffle for Jamie to get out of bed and, when she does, she’s naked as the day she was born and shivering. When Dani opens her blanket in an offering, Jamie crosses the distance between them in two easy strides and slides into its warmth, her arms wrapping around Dani’s just-as-naked body. It seems so familiar, so goddamn _regular_ for them to be pressed together like this. Before Jamie, Dani had never once been fully naked with _anyone_ and now it seems like the most natural thing in the world.

“What is it?” Jamie asks, and Dani nods to the window, until Jamie—still hugging her—turns her head to look. At the sight of the snow, her eyes widen comically and a smile appears on her lips, slipping up slowly like honey until it’s one of the most beautiful things Dani’s ever seen. “Oh, _wow_.”

“Yeah,” Dani says. “Might be a white Christmas after all.”

Jamie gives her a warning look. “Don’t jinx it.”

“Sorry.”

Jamie kisses her on the chin and then rests her head on Dani’s shoulder, face turned outward so she can continue to look out the window. Dani clutches her closer, rocking them back and forth to some tuneless melody that only they can hear. “It’s beautiful.”

“So are you,” Dani says.

A snort of laughter. Jamie’s body shakes in her arms with it. “Dork,” she says.

“Yeah,” Dani agrees wistfully.

Standing there with Jamie, the peaceful silence of the snowy morning seems to take on a physical shape. She can feel it in the bird-frail bones of Jamie’s shoulder blades, the bumps of her spine, the sharp corner of her jaw as it presses into her own shoulder. Jamie’s hair is finger-ruined and messy, tickling Dani’s nose when she buries her face in it a little, but it’s worth it to smell the flowers of her perfume, the clean scent that lingers there despite the hours spent tangled together the night before.

Jamie is quite possibly the most precious thing Dani has ever held in her arms. Dani makes her second wish of the morning without meaning to and then can’t remember what she asked for after the moment passes.

“The kids’ll be going mad,” Jamie whispers and Dani chuckles, chest bumping against her lover’s as she does.

“Probably.”

“How good are ya’ in snowball fights?”

A serious question asked very seriously. Jamie pulls back enough to reveal a sober frown. 

“I can hold my own,” Dani tells her and Jamie breathes a sigh of relief.

“Then they don’t stand a chance.”

“Weren’t you supposed to ask me something?” 

As distracted as she’d been the night before—as they’d _both_ been—Dani had forgotten about Flora’s comment. Jamie laughs at the reminder and nods.

“God, yeah, I guess so,” she says. “That little shit.”

Dani lifts her eyebrows expectantly, waiting, and Jamie rushes on with:

“There’s a...Henry throws a Christmas Eve party every year and he...Flora wanted me to ask if you’d come. If you’d want to.”

Here’s the thing: Dani’s been asked to school dances in the past, but it was always by boys she didn’t know how to say no to and it was _nothing_ like this. And maybe that’s because this really _is_ nothing like that, but she can’t stop the giddy way her lungs expand at the question.

“As your date?” she asks and Jamie looks a little embarrassed. Won’t meet her eyes properly.

“If that’s important to you,” she says.

Dani smiles. “It is,” she says. “And _yes._ Of course I’ll come.”

The first kiss of the morning comes then, Jamie pressing into it like she never wants to end. Dani shares the sentiment. Neither of them has time to worry about arbitrary things like morning breath, so the kiss lingers for a long time. In the sleet-white light coming in through the windows, reflecting off the back of the snow like a hundred, little mirrors, Jamie looks flushed and stunning. Dani wants to slip a hand down her body, but worries about breaking the spell and doesn’t.

“What were you drawing?” Jamie asks after a little while, turning to look at the finger-drawn doodle still hanging onto the glass.

Dani looks it over. “I don’t know,” she admits. “Some city somewhere. Between here and Columbus.”

“Halfway point?” Jamie asks and Dani nods. “We should visit.”

“We should _live_ there.”

It’s silly talk. Nonsense words filled with an emotion neither of them should be feeling yet. Some game of pretend that neither of them is brave enough to shatter yet and it feels like it could be real on a morning wrapped together in a blanket, a layer of magical snow waiting outside for them—uncharted and untouched and something they can go and leave a mark on _together_.

Something to show they were both here.

“Yeah, okay,” Jamie whispers, kissing Dani’s cheek, then lips. She presses their foreheads together again. “I will if you will.”

And Dani will. Of course she will.

_________

“Jamie! Dani!” Flora cries when they step out of Jamie’s truck, running as fast as she can in her boots, weighed down by her coat and gloves and hat, her scarf flapping a little in the wind. She has snow dusting off her shoulders, her eyes bright with cold. “It snowed! It snowed! Did you see?”

“I see,” Jamie says, letting herself be hugged and laughing as Flora pulls away to give Dani the same treatment.

“Are you and Miles making a snowman?” Dani asks, hugging Flora back like she’s done it a hundred times before. 

And it’s only been a few seconds since the last time—right before they were spotted by the children, before they got out of the truck—but Jamie wants to kiss her again. It had been hard enough to leave bed the second time and it feels like downright torture to keep her distance now after another night together, after Dani’s body pressed to her own, hovering above her, Dani steadying her with her weight as she fucked Jamie down into the mattress. Something in Dani’s eyes as she catches her watching lets Jamie know that she’s not the only one remembering and that only serves to make things that much worse.

God, she’s never wanted _anyone_ the way she wants Dani and it’s not just in that supremely carnal, lust-fueled way and isn’t _that_ just the kicker? Imagining making her breakfast and holding hands at the market and—

“—wouldn’t you, Jamie?” Miles’s voice cuts Jamie’s thoughts off, full of some preternatural mischievousness only he seems to understand.

“What’s that?” Jamie asks, caught beneath four pairs of eyes.

 _Five,_ actually. Owen is coming out of the house, just as bundled as the children, and he, too, seems to be waiting for something from her even as he walks up to join them.

“I asked if you’d be up for a rematch,” he says and Jamie understands immediately, remembering their snowball fight from the year before—the one that she had definitely _won_ even if Rebecca insisted she fold because of Miles’s age.

Whatever.

“Oh, you bet I am,” Jamie tells him and she thrusts a hand out for him to shake, which he does with this happy smirk that never fails to make her laugh.

“You’re on,” he says.

“Oh, Miles, can we play, too?” Flora asks. She’s holding onto one of Dani’s hands and one of Owen’s, caught between them and bouncing up and down on her heels.

“It’s not a _game_ ,” Miles says. 

“What’s the matter?” Jamie taunts. “Afraid she’ll beat you?”

Miles scoffs. “Hardly.”

“What are we playing?” Dani asks and Owen jumps in to offer an explanation.

“They like to pelt each other with snowballs. Last year, no winner was officially declared.”

Understanding fills Dani’s expression. She must be remembering Jamie’s question earlier, when they’d been standing together in her flat. “That sounds like fun.”

“I call Owen,” Miles says without breaking his eye contact with Jamie.

“So we’re doing partners then?” Jamie asks and he nods. 

“I want Dani!” Flora says immediately and Dani’s initial reaction is to smile down at the beaming girl before throwing an apologetic look to Jamie.

“That’d leave me alone,” Jamie says. “Unless Hannah would—” She’s cut off by a serious head shake from Owen, as if he’s already tried that route and been turned down. “That’s not fair.”

And Miles’s damned smirk. “What’s the matter? Afraid I’ll beat you?” he asks, a parrot of her earlier question. 

Jamie juts out a foot to kick at him and he giggles and jumps out of reach. “Fine,” she says, throwing up her hands in surrender. “I’ll just have to take you _all_ down.”

Flora claps her mittens together, leaning even further into Dani’s side. Miles takes off at a run around Jamie and further into the yard, calling for Owen to join him. As he does, Owen throws Jamie a mock salute and jogs off, leaving Jamie to watch as Flora begins to pull Dani away.

Before she can get too far, though, Dani says something to Flora and pulls away so she can drift back over to Jamie, her pretty lips the only thing Jamie can even focus on. 

It’s a quick thing, really. Dani just leans in and gives her a quick kiss that everyone else is far too busy to notice, but it’s funny the way Jamie feels herself lift a little off the ground. 

“For luck,” Dani says, kissing her again before going to meet Flora, already sitting herself up behind one of the hedges, and Jamie thinks of heroes going into battle—knights in armor and Superman’s cape fluttering in the wind—and thinks, quite giddily, that she could do anything if Dani just kept kissing her like that.

_________

She _can_ do anything, it turns out. Seemingly, four to one, she holds her own as Miles throws snowball after snowball her way, using the corner of the manor for protection. Maybe she lucks out because Flora is far too fascinated with the _act_ of making snowballs to actually throw any and Owen’s aim is absolute _shit_.

Not to mention: Dani refuses to throw a single snowball her way, aiming, instead, for Miles and Owen. Every time Jamie lands a hit of her own, Dani and Flora cheer for her and Miles scowls even as he’s being a good sport about the whole thing.

After a snowball to the face, Owen taps out and lies out in the snow on his back, making lazy snow angels. Eventually, Flora decides that this looks more fun and goes to join him until the two of them are giggling and flapping their arms back and forth in the snow like the happiest of children.

The fight ends suddenly some twenty minutes to half-hour after it begins. Miles tucks a few snowballs beneath his arms and sprints from his hiding spot behind one of the garden walls to behind Jamie’s truck where he is nearer to her spot by the front doors. He is young and lacks strength, maybe, but he makes up for it in aim and the first snowball smashes into the bricks beside Jamie’s head, showering her with snow and ice as it explodes, the next is just barely missed when she ducks at the last minute and—

—a loud _thud_ of impact as the last one smashes her directly in the chest. Jamie’s hands come up to clutch at the spot where the snow is still falling off of her, staggering a little dramatically as she falls to her knees.

From behind the truck, Miles gives a gleeful yell and a little fist pump.

“You’ve vanquished me!” Jamie calls to him, still clutching her chest. “I am defeated!”

Flora gives a delighted shriek from behind her and Dani is nearby, rushing over to drop to her knees beside Jamie, drawing her into her lap. With a little wink, Jamie pretends to die as hysterically as possible, giving a few full-body twitches before lying still.

Hands on her face then as Dani cups her cheeks. “You killed her!” Dani calls in a voice pitched high and Miles cackles at the whole display. 

Little footsteps rush toward them and before Jamie can even open her eyes, she’s being tackled by him. “I win!” he yells right in her ear and Jamie wraps him in a hug as she winces. 

“Yes, you do,” she says and she thinks about her little brother—wherever he is—and all the moments they never had together.

Moments like this one.

Miles hugs like he’s drowning, like she’s a liferaft, and Jamie is all too happy to play the part.

Over his shoulder, she catches Dani smiling, this awed thing like she’s seeing something for the very first time and Jamie has no idea what it is, but she can’t care with how Miles is laughing against her. Someone else slams into her back where she’s sitting up now and she doesn’t even have to look to know that it’s Flora.

“Quick, Miles!” she says. “We have to bring her back to life!”

They plan to do this by suffocating her with hugs.

Jamie thinks there are worse ways to go.

_________

Henry greets Dani with a friendly handshake and hugs Jamie. Given how Jamie stiffens up, it’s a bit of a surprise, but she leans into it all the same. The children leave their layers drying on the floor in the kitchen, chattering happily with their uncle as Owen makes lunch. 

As distracted as everyone is, Dani and Jamie take the opportunity to slip away. Dani lets herself be led up the stairs for the first time and down the hall, into a tidy bedroom with pictures of family and friends on the wall. She recognizes the woman in every one of them as Rebecca and immediately understands where they are.

“Cold?” Jamie asks when she catches Dani shivering in her snow-soaked clothes, looking over some of the books on Rebecca’s shelves. 

Dani gives her a sheepish smile. “A little,” she confesses.

Jamie nods and says, “Come here,” and Dani lets herself be led somewhere else: the bathroom through the door by the bed. 

It’s a nice space: a shower in the corner, towels folded on a shelf beside it. A bin of hair care products and other cosmetics by the sink. Jamie turns the shower on and pulls down two towels, setting them on the rack at the edge of the shower curtain before turning back to Dani. 

“Figured we could warm up,” she says and Dani thinks of the others downstairs, but the house is huge and they won’t be missed. Besides, this is something they have not done yet and she can’t bring herself to turn down the opportunity. “That okay?”

Dani nods breathlessly and lets herself fall into Jamie’s arms, into a warm embrace that muffles her next words: “More than okay. Perfect, even.”

“Perfect?” Jamie asks, grinning wide and delighted. “Not a word I’m used to hearing, if I’m being honest.”

She’s telling the truth, though it’s carefully hidden behind a joke. Still, Dani can’t believe that for one second. She thinks she’d spend the rest of her life trying to prove just how perfect Jamie really _is_ if given the opportunity.

But, for now, she settles for kissing her. Being kissed. Stripping Jamie’s clothes down her body and dropping them to the floor as Jamie does the same to hers. In the warm shower, they press together, giving soft kisses as they wash each other up. 

When Dani scrubs shampoo into Jamie’s hair, scratching it over her scalp, she wonders how she’ll ever go back after this now that she knows what it’s like. Jamie’s touch is careful and reverent as she runs a wash rag covered in soap over Dani’s chilled skin. Her mouth is hot on Dani’s neck and she keeps saying things to make Dani laugh—things that make Dani want to plant her feet where she stands and _stay_.

It isn’t until they’re rinsing off beneath the stream of water that Jamie’s touch becomes more deliberate. They make love against the shower wall, then, because there’s no other word for the way Jamie’s hand grips Dani’s hips, how her fingers feel between her legs. Dani comes with Jamie’s mouth pressed to her own and closes her eyes as the feeling washes over her.

Prays to herself, to God, to anyone who’s listening to make this moment last forever.

It doesn’t, of course, because it can’t. But Dani can’t stop herself from _wishing_ , can she?

..


	4. christmas surprise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'd apologize for the length of this chapter but i'm not going to. a lot happens.
> 
> i should have this finished by tomorrow. enjoy and happy new year, loves!

There are a lot of things that Jamie likes about Rebecca, though she rarely allows herself to consider them too seriously—and she _never_ voices them aloud for fear that Rebecca will use the word “sweet” or “cute” and never let her live it down. But when you’re friends with someone, you begin to learn their quirks and make peace with them.

For instance, she knows that Rebecca is a chip-thief—that she’ll take the food right off someone’s plate without even asking for permission. She knows that she has a terrible habit of snooping, which has led to a few too many awkward conversations over the course of their friendship. And she knows this too:

Of everyone Jamie has ever met, Rebecca has the _worst_ timing of all of them.

It’s impeccable, really. Jamie’s been woken up in the middle of the night plenty of times, most of them because of some asshole thing Peter’s just accomplished. She gets sick or tired or weepy in the middle of a perfectly good night out. She needs to borrow Jamie’s truck on days when _Jamie_ needs it. And she’s barged in on awkward situations so many times in the past that Jamie has long since suspended her possession of a spare key to her flat.

And now this:

Her phone vibrating at the precise moment Dani gets Jamie’s pants around her ankles. It’s on the bedside table where Jamie set it just moments before and the force of its vibration makes the whole thing shake, makes both of them freeze where they are and look toward it—Dani kneeling on the mattress above Jamie, who is sitting back against her palms, out of breath and largely _on fire_ because things were just getting good.

Slowly, she leans over to get a look at her screen and frowns when she sees Rebecca’s name at the top. It isn’t as if this is the first time she’s heard from her friend since she left, but the fact that she’s _calling_ when it’s nearly midnight is something she hadn’t been expecting. Reaching out, she presses her thumb to the side button of her phone and silences the call, bringing the violent vibrations to a stop.

“Ignore it,” she says, looking back up at Dani, who is open mouthed and holding Jamie’s jeans in her hands. “Get down here.”

Dani nods dumbly. “Yeah,” she says. “I can do that.” She flings Jamie’s jeans onto the floor and gracefully falls on top of Jamie, settling between her legs and kissing her again.

The hot press of their bare skin together makes Jamie moan, wrapping her legs around Dani’s hip and pulling her in. She takes the clasp of Dani’s bra into her hands and starts undoing it, Dani panting against her neck as she kisses and nips at her sensitive skin, and then—

Her phone starts ringing again.

A FaceTime call this time. 

Jamie groans and drops her hands to the flat of the bed while Dani rears back. “Oh, my god.”

“You should take that,” Dani tells her. She’s propped up by the flat of her palms on either side of Jamie’s head, so flushed and beautiful that Jamie can’t help but run her palms up Dani’s skinny ribs, press her fingertips into her shoulders.

“I don’t want to,” she says.

Dani laughs. “The sooner you do, the sooner you can come back here.” She leans her head down and kisses Jamie’s chin, then her neck. Humming, Jamie curls a hand into Dani’s hair even as her phone continues to buzz on the table beside her head. “And then we can pick up where we left off.”

“Yeah?” she gasps as Dani’s teeth graze her collarbones.

She can feel Dani’s lips spreading into a smirk where they’re pressed into her skin. “Yeah. Maybe…”

“Maybe what?”

Dani pulls her head back up, even more flushed than she was before, and bites her lip for a second before continuing. “Maybe we can put the thing you have hidden in that drawer to good use.” She nods to the shaking table and Jamie’s stomach bottoms out, heart biting her throat. She’s not even sure what she’s supposed to say to that.

“Oh,” is what comes out.

“If you’re interested, that is.” 

It’s clear from the semi-panicked look in Dani’s eyes that it's taken some serious courage for her to speak so plainly. Jamie wonders how long she’s _known_ about what’s hidden in that drawer, how long it's taken her to work up the courage to acknowledge it.

 _Interested_?

Jamie nearly knocks her own head off her shoulders with her nod. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she says softly. “I’d be interested. Very interested.”

A kiss to her cheek. “Good. Me too.” Another kiss, this time to her lips. “So hurry up.”

Jamie doesn’t have to be told twice. 

Dani rolls off her to give her some room and then Jamie is up and grabbing her phone from the table, scooping her shirt from the floor and throwing it on as she rushes out of her bedroom and into the dark living room. She flips on the lamp by the couch and answers the call just as she’s sitting down.

On her screen, Rebecca’s semi-blurry face pops up, looking a little amused already. Jamie checks out her own image in the corner of the screen, trying to tidy up her hair as discreetly as possible.

“Finally,” Rebecca says. “I was beginning to think you were dead.”

“Sorry, I was, um...I was doing something,” Jamie offers, and it sounds absolutely pathetic, even to her. Maybe she could get away with it if it weren’t for the fact that she’s still so breathless, or if her cheeks were flushed pink, her lips bright cherry red. 

Maybe if Rebecca couldn’t see that she’s—

“Are you in your flat?” 

Jamie blinks. “What?” As she asks, she tries to angle herself in such a way that Rebecca won’t be able to see anything recognizable behind her, but she’s too late. She can already see the way Rebecca is narrowing her eyes and she _knows_ that look—knows it means there’s absolutely no point at _all_ in trying—but she tries anyway. “No, I’m…”

Rebecca’s eyes widen in surprised glee. “You _are_ !” she says, one hand coming up to cover her mouth. “And... _why_ are you in your flat, Jamie? Anything happen that I should know about?”

“No,” Jamie says, because if she agrees, she will _never hear the end of it_ and she may as well set up camp out in the living room for the rest of the night, because she can’t imagine a world where Rebecca just lets this go. “I was just...dropping something off for...for Dani and you called, so I—”

“I bet you were,” Rebecca jokes, wiggling her eyebrows.

“No, not like that,” Jamie lies.

“And where is the lovely Dani? Mind having her pop out for a bit of a hello? Or would she have to put trousers on for that?”

Jamie splutters. “She— It’s not like—”

“Are _you_ wearing trousers?” 

Silence follows the question and Jamie glares at Rebecca’s face on her screen. Tries to muster her most convincing look of annoyance, even as goosebumps spread up her bare thighs from the cool chill of the air in the living room. She resists the urge to shiver.

“Yes,” she tries, but there’s no truth in it and that’s clear even from another country entirely.

“Oh, my god,” Rebecca says, growing increasingly excited by the news she’s just stumbled upon. Jamie shifts in her seat, debating the pros and cons of just hanging up before anything further can be said. “Tell me you’re not sleeping with the foreign exchange student.”

“The _what_?”

Rebecca points. “You are!” She laughs a little wildly, clapping her hands together and moving her face even closer to what Jamie can only assume is her laptop. “I am so _proud_ of you.”

And, okay. That’s a bit of a shock.

Jamie isn’t actually certain what it is she’d been expecting—admonishment or scolding or something like that—but it wasn’t Rebecca’s delighted contentment. “What?”

“God, when was the last time you even got laid? I’m trying to remember.”

“ _Stop_ trying to remember, then. Jesus.”

“I mean...Did she have to sweep away cobwebs or were you good to go? Did she have to talk you through it or—?”

“Fuck off, Becs.”

Rebecca cackles. “Oh, my god. You’re so embarrassed. Is that because it’s bad or because it’s _that_ good?”

If there were a way to sink into the ground, Jamie thinks she’d choose to do it. But there isn’t. So she just sits there and takes the abuse. “How did this become about me?” she asks. “Did you _need_ something or what?”

“Clearly not as badly as _you_ did!”

Jamie groans, dropping her face into the flat palm of her free hand. “Oh, my god. Really?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Rebecca says, her laugh winding down a bit. “It’s just...I don’t think I’ve ever seen you show interest in a girl for more than a quick chat at the pub. And now you’re shacking up with the woman who swapped houses with me. Was it just the convenience the other girls were lacking? Maybe you just need a girl who’s on your way home. Or, you know... _is_ your way home.”

“It’s not like that,” Jamie says, and then immediately realizes that she’s playing right into this whole thing when she should be ignoring Rebecca entirely. Not giving her more information. As if Owen and Hannah weren’t insufferable enough to begin with, Rebecca has a knack for chewing on the bone a bit too long. 

But she must hear the serious turn Jamie’s voice has taken, because her amused smile begins to drip away, morphing into something a little more sympathetic and apologetic. “I’m just teasing,” she says. “I know you. I know it isn’t.” 

It’s dark where she is, too, and Jamie is suddenly very aware of how far away they are from one another. Rebecca is sitting in what looks like a living room, a blue couch and a short staircase behind her head. She’s in Dani’s apartment, and Jamie wishes she could get a better look at it, if only so she could picture things a little more clearly once Dani is gone. 

“Dani is different,” Jamie hears herself say and it’s not that it isn’t true, it’s that she’s not really aware of deciding to admit that. She thinks of her, waiting for her in the bedroom, and heat flares between her legs at the same time that her heart pinches in her chest _tight_. “She’s...I don’t know.”

That’s the thing about Dani, really: Jamie really has no clue what to do with her.

Maybe it’s because there are too _many_ things she wants and she can’t choose which to start with. Maybe it’s because she knows it’s pointless either way. 

Rebecca is gaping now, completely staggered. “Jamie, oh my, _God_. You love her!”

The accusation is keen and abrupt and entirely discombobulating, and the harsh exhale that makes up Jamie’s next breath is a touch too loud for the empty air. She feels like a child, caught hiding their vitamins in the sofa cushions—caught pants around their ankles in front of everyone they’ve ever met. Rebecca has just effectively pantsed her and now Jamie isn’t sure what she’s supposed to say.

It’s meant to be a joke, she suspects, but there’s honestly no telling with Rebecca. Jamie wants to fight it based on the fact that it’s only been four days _alone_ , and knowing that Dani is just in the other room—that she might have _heard_ that—makes her feel all the worse.

She can’t even really decipher how she’s feeling, actually. There’s too much going on inside her for that. There’s nervousness, yes, and maybe some shame at being put on the spot as such, but there are other things too—happiness, giddiness even, and that warm, glowing affection that Dani is always threatening to drown her in.

At a loss, she settles for shaking her head and saying, “Come on, Becs.” Her throat feels steel-bitten by some kind of garrote, cutting her off from what really needs to be said here. 

“I’m sorry,” Rebecca says and Jamie shrugs. 

“No need.” She tries for an air of flippancy that she’s not sure sticks the right way. “Just...trying not to...get my hopes up. Make a big deal out of nothing.”

On the other line, Rebecca’s silence becomes this thin, impatient thing, like thread picked apart by eager fingers and she’s leaned forward, trying to think of something to say. Jamie accidentally bumps her shin into the coffee table in front of her and curses under her breath, the noise of it shocking through the quiet so suddenly that it might as well be a peal of thunder.

“Jamie, can I ask you something?” Rebecca says. “And can you promise to be honest with me?”

Jamie can’t find her voice enough to answer properly, so she settles for nodding, trying to relax the tense muscles of her shoulders, her neck, her legs. There’s no reason to be tense, she tells herself. Not about this. Not with Rebecca and not about Dani.

This is Rebecca’s question: “ _Is_ it nothing?”

And there’s no hesitancy in Jamie’s answer: “No. It’s not.”

Everything about Dani is a big deal. Jamie’s known that from the start. The only information that’s not available is _what_ Jamie is going to do about it.

Rebecca smiles like a sunrise—teeth white in the lamplight of Dani’s living room, all those thousands of miles away. “I didn’t think so,” she says, and then: “I’m happy for you.”

Jamie tries to recall if anyone has ever said that to her before. She thinks, if they had, she might remember it. “Thanks,” she says, “Me, too,” and means every word.

There’s a part of her that wants to say _maybe you shouldn’t be_ because she has been doing nothing these last four days if not running on borrowed time. But she thinks saying that will only call attention to the truth at hand and she’d really, really rather not do that.

_________

Dani is sitting on Jamie’s bedspread, waiting for her to come back, when it hits her.

The angles of the shadows when the lamp is on are familiar, the lines the darkness draws from the dresser in the corner, from the edge of the bed frame. If she looks down at the fluffy, blue rug on the floor, she can imagine exactly how it would feel to set her bare feet on it because she’s done it a hundred times over the last five days. 

The side of the bed she’s sitting on is the one that she considers to be her own, but it _isn’t_ . It’s not hers and it’s not theirs. It’s _Jamie’s_. This flat, the things inside of it, the life she’s riding on the coattails of are Jamie’s and Jamie’s alone.

For the first real time, Dani lets herself understand how deep this _thing_ with Jamie actually runs. In the early hours of it all, she’d let herself consider the possibility of it not meaning anything—of it just being a vacation fling and nothing more—but she’d been kidding herself even then. Now, the memory of that isn’t even comical, it’s just a bit tragic.

Going home won’t change anything. This _thing_ won’t magically go away once they’re in separate countries again.

In fact, Dani has a feeling that it’ll only get worse.

She has visions of late-night phone calls and long emails. Putting too many pillows on the side of the bed where Jamie sleeps just to make herself feel less _alone_ , and how long could she keep something like that up? How long could _either_ of them?

Dani’s certain she doesn’t know, just as she’s certain that she would very much rather _not think about it_.

And she knows that she has to do something about this, but she lets herself exist in the brief sliver of hope that what little time remains offers. She can exist there, or so she tells herself. She can let that be enough for now.

“Hey, sorry about that.”

Jamie’s voice calls Dani back and, when she looks up, Jamie is standing there at the edge of the bed shifting her weight a little. Her t-shirt is oversized, but not by enough to cover more than the tops of her thighs and she looks cold. Dani adjusts on the bed and opens her arms, letting Jamie collapse into them and snuggle down into her like they’ve been doing this for years. 

Dani holds her, strokes her hair, and kisses her forehead. “Everything okay?” she asks, voice low and comforting and she’s not really sure _what_ she’s meant to be providing comfort for—or for _whom_ —but she can’t help it.

“Yeah,” Jamie nods against Dani’s chin.

“Rebecca need anything? Or just checking in?”

A pause. “I don’t know, actually.”

“What?”

Jamie chuckles, vibrating against Dani’s chest. “She got sidetracked. Forgot to tell me and I forgot to ask.”

“Oh,” Dani says, breathing it out with a bit of a laugh. “Oh, well.”

“Yeah.” 

They drift into that silence they’ve found together—cultivated after hours spent learning what makes the other tick; comfortable and knowledgeable now in a way that allows such slight and basic intimacies. In a moment, Dani is going to kiss Jamie. She’s going to tilt her head down and kiss her and press her thumb into the dip of Jamie’s hip bone to try and pick back up where they left off, so long as Jamie is a willing participant. 

But not yet.

Especially because: “Have you ever been in love before?”

The question catches her off guard. This isn’t the kind of thing they’ve talked about before. Sure, they’ve discussed previous relationships, albeit briefly, but her and Jamie tend to stick to lighter, easier topics. Discussing concepts like _love_ and _forever_ often feel beyond the ability of what their situation allows.

Dani doesn’t have to—not really—but she thinks about this for a long time. And then she says, “I’m not sure.” It’s a bad answer, but Jamie hums anyway, curious and thoughtful. “What about you?”

A grunt then in the form of silent self-deprecation. “Nah,” comes the answer. “I don’t think so. S’not for me.”

“What do you mean?”

Jamie shrugs against her. “I don’t know,” she says. “Not seen too many folks have good experiences with it. Never seemed worth it.”

A cynical response if there ever was one. Dani wants to dissect that, because she’s certain it has everything to do with Jamie’s childhood and the household she was raised in. It’s not like Dani doesn’t agree with her, but she can’t help but want to know _more_ all the same. 

And maybe it stings a little in a way she’s trying not to consider.

Dani brushes a hand down the side of Jamie’s hips, feeling Jamie’s soft exhales hitch against her neck. “I don’t think it’s something you necessarily choose,” she says. “I think it just happens sometimes.” She figures that now’s as good a time as any and then cranes her neck to press a kiss to Jamie’s forehead, then the tip of her nose. At once, Jamie tilts her head back and offers up her lips, which Dani doesn’t hesitate to kiss as well. 

Jamie hums against her mouth, the vibrations sending tingles through Dani’s lips and chin and neck, down to her fingertips. “Yeah,” comes the whispered response. “Yeah, I think you’re right.”

There’s more to be said and both of them seem to know that, but Dani isn’t sure how much it’s worth it when they have so little time left. She doubts that anything they might say would change the ending they’re both heading toward.

Jamie readjusts, pulling away to do so, and then she’s lying on top of Dani in the bed, her lips trailing marks up and down Dani’s bare shoulders, kissing the strap of her bra, licking into the dip of her collarbones, and making Dani’s entire body go _numb_ from the heat she’s spreading with each touch of their skin together.

“Did you want to…?” Jamie begins, pulling back a little to make eye contact.

Dani nods, reaching out a hand to pull open the bedside table’s drawer, fumbling for the little, black bag waiting for her inside. She pulls it out and rests it on the bed, not bothering to close the drawer. “Is that...okay?” she asks, and Jamie looks between her and the bag in her fist before nodding breathlessly.

“Yeah,” she says. “Of course. Have you ever…?”

Her voice is so controlled and measured that it makes Dani feel like she’s about to implode all the more. It’s a wonder she’s managed to keep from just pulling Jamie down into her already, what with how turned on she is. All those thoughts she’s had since she first stumbled upon the bag in the drawer are playing through her mind at once, trying to come to terms with the fact that _some of them_ are about to come true. 

She shakes her head. “But I’m familiar with the concept,” she says, because that’s as much detail as she’s willing to go into.

Fortunately, Jamie doesn’t need to know more. “Okay,” she says. “And what were you...what were you thinking you wanted to—?”

There are more coy ways to say it and Dani is usually far more timid than she is blunt, but there’s an inferno boiling between her legs, licking up and down her muscles and veins, and she can’t bring herself to care about decorum for even a brief second.

“I want you to fuck me, Jamie.”

She sees the moment everything shatters in Jamie’s eyes. All it takes is one blink and then whatever control had been lingering there is gone and Jamie is kissing her down into the mattress _bruisingly._ Dani doesn’t think she’s ever been so commanding before, but, of course, she’s not one to complain. She just releases the bag in her hand and wraps her arms around Jamie’s neck, pulling her down even harder.

“You’re gonna do me in one of these days, Poppins,” Jamie husks into Dani’s ear, tugging Dani’s head to the side by threading the fingers of her left hand into blonde hair and _tugging_. “Say it again.”

Dani grabs one of Jamie’s hands resting beside her head on the bed and grabs her wrist, guiding it to slide open-palmed down Dani’s body and between her legs. Jamie moans a little at the warm and wetness she finds there, the soaking fabric clinging tight to Dani and her fingers making maddening patterns there. “Fuck me, Jamie,” she says. “ _Please_ fuck me.”

Fingers slide into her panties then, pressing hard and firm right where Dani needs her, their foreheads coming to rest together. 

“Like that,” Dani whispers, eyes slamming shut as Jamie slips inside her, fucking her slowly with a curl of her fingers each time. “Just like that.”

Jamie grunts against the side of Dani’s head, kissing the tip of her ear as her pace quickens. She uses two fingers, then adds a third, using her thumb to press into Dani’s clit, her own hips pushing her hand forward, grinding into Dani even further. Pressure is building inside Dani’s veins, leaving her unable to do anything but throw her head back and gasp as she gasps out Jamie’s name. 

“God, Dani - _God_ , you’re so beautiful, I can’t even —” 

Jamie’s face is buried in Dani’s neck when Dani comes against her hand, a ringing gasp escaping from her lips as she claws into Jamie’s shoulder blades and bucks up against her. She hasn’t even begun to recover when Jamie’s warmth pulls away, a few kisses dotted against her neck and cheek, then her shoulder, before she’s gone. 

When she opens her eyes, she sees Jamie kneeling just above her and a bit to the right, her shirt gone again and her lips twisted in a concentrating frown as she messes with the bag on the bed. From it, she pulls out what looks like a pair of briefs with a little hole in the middle and Dani doesn’t have to break out the critical thinking skills to figure out what it’s for. 

The dildo itself is bright purple and Dani feels herself flush with embarrassment the moment she sees Jamie’s hand wrapped around it. She fights herself the whole time Jamie is slipping off her underwear and pulling on the harness, trying her very best not to laugh, because she knows it will ruin the mood. She can’t tell if the urge stems from real humiliation or just from nervousness, but she tries to swallow it down all the same.

“Still okay?” Jamie asks once she’s slotting the dildo into place between her hips. She must be able to sense Dani’s hesitation—the shift in the mood that it’s caused—and it’s possible that she’s reading it as something else entirely. Maybe regret or cold feet—Dani wanting to back out rather than go all in.

“Yeah,” Dani says. “I’m good.”

“Are you sure?”

“Very. Just...a little nervous.”

A warm hand rests against her belly and Jamie leans down to kiss her, angling her body so that the dildo doesn’t make things any more awkward by bumping into something it isn’t supposed to. “Just relax,” Jamie whispers. “Let me help.”

And Dani can’t say no to that.

She lies back again and Jamie settles between her thighs again, kissing all the bare skin she can reach with bruised and warm lips. Dani’s legs hike up Jamie’s hips, giving her more room to work as Jamie brushes her mouth over Dani’s hips, her fingers up and down the soft skin of her sternum and arms. By the time her hips shift enough that Dani can actually _feel_ the dildo sliding against her clit, Dani is loose-limbed and desperate, cupping Jamie’s face to bring her up into a hot kiss.

And once Jamie is sliding into her—full and stretching and delicious in a way Dani hadn’t expected—any nervousness that might have lingered is gone entirely. Jamie is such a considerate lover, always putting Dani’s needs and comfort above her own desires, and she moves slowly at first, constantly pulling back to check in, to look over Dani’s expression and make sure she can see no sign of hesitance or pain or anything else.

It takes Dani wrapping her hands around the bones of Jamie’s hips, actually guiding her thrusts, for her to speed up and catch Dani’s quiet plea for _more_ and _faster, harder_. Pretty soon after that, the bed is creaking and slamming into the wall from the force of Jamie’s thrusts. She’s holding herself up on her palms, using all of her weight to press down into Dani, who, for her part, is just trying to hold on for the ride, pressing her fingers against her own clit at a pace set to match Jamie’s.

Not long after, Dani is coming with a sharp cry, her muscles locking against Jamie’s thrusts as Jamie uses each one to grind against the toy, finishing herself off. She collapses onto Dani’s body, tired and spent and Dani strokes her hair, coos soft praises into her ear. 

Things like: _you’re so good that was so good_.

And: _oh, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie._

Not: _I love you._

Not: _don’t let me go._

Or: _you’re more than I ever thought to ask for._

She keeps those things to herself, marvelling at how much she means both as she presses kisses to Jamie’s sweaty forehead, her damp hair, her neck and shoulders. 

In two days, she’ll be on a flight back to Ohio and she knows— _knows, knows, knows_ —that there isn’t enough time between this moment and the next to say any of the things she knows she needs to say.

_________

“If you two get all mushy tonight,” Owen mutters from Jamie’s side, “I can’t promise I won’t take photographic evidence for later.” 

They’re standing in the front hall in front of this year’s twelve-foot tree, watching as the children run around trying to decorate it. Hannah is on damage control, making sure that all blank holes on the tree are properly filled and that the ornaments aren’t bunched too closely together. Owen is holding a box of old ornaments in his arms that Jamie keeps pulling things from in order to pass off to be placed by Miles or Flora. Dani and Henry are talking to one another familiarly as they sip at some hot chocolate Dani’s made. 

They seem to have hit it off somewhat, which Jamie can’t help but find fascinating. It isn’t as if Henry is a standoffish man, no, but he’s not usually too keen on strangers. It took him some time to warm up to Rebecca and Jamie herself when they first arrived. 

She wonders if it has anything to do with the mug he’s holding and Dani’s unprecedented cocoa skills. 

“I know where you sleep,” Jamie reminds Owen, and there’s a bit of a warning in her tone, but no malice. “And I could blackmail you just as quickly, you know.” She nods at Hannah, who Owen keeps looking at with this lovesick expression, so sweet it’s a bit sickening.

Owen scoffs. “Hardly. All you’d do is prove that I’m capable of fighting outside my weight class.”

Jamie laughs, shaking her head, and then Flora is rushing up to her empty-handed. 

“What’s left?” Flora asks, which is a fair question because they’re reaching the end of the tree’s carrying capacity. Pretty soon, it’ll begin tipping over from the weight of the ornaments bearing down on its limbs.

Jamie peeks over the edge of the box Owen is holding. “You’ve got...a little penguin, some more candy canes, and an angel.”

Immediately, Flora crows out, “Penguin!” and Jamie laughs as she pulls out the ornament in question, handing it over.

As she rushes off with it, heading toward Hannah, who is finding a spot for it on the tree, Miles comes over chanting, “Angel, angel, angel.” Jamie hands it off to him and he takes it without slowing down, just turning and heading off after his sister.

From the side, Dani is watching him run around with an emotion Jamie can’t quite name. It’s an expression that has been turned both children’s ways in the time that they’ve all spent together in the last couple days—watching movies, lying out in the snow, reading storybooks together in the living room—and it makes Jamie’s stomach do this _thing_ every time because, with each moment that passes, Dani only seems more and more devoted to Jamie’s life here, the people with whom she shares that life, and Jamie isn’t sure what to do with that.

Flora calls for her uncle, and Henry looks up from his conversation with Dani, eyes lighting up at the sight of his niece standing on her tiptoes to try and reach a good spot for her ornament. “I need help!” she’s saying.

“On my way,” Henry tells her, setting his mug aside. He gives Dani a semi-apologetic look and then goes to Flora, swooping in to lift her from the floor and hold her high enough to place the ornament. 

Dani watches this for a moment and then drifts over to Owen and Jamie. “Well, this is coming along, isn’t it?” she asks, looking around at not only the tree, but the lights and garland strung along the banisters, the poinsettias Jamie’s set out along the tables. 

“That it is,” Owen agrees, bumping his shoulder into Jamie’s affectionately.

Jamie stares at Dani, tracing the slender line of her neck, the flutter of her eyelashes. When Dani catches her looking, she freezes and pretends she was glancing over her shoulder the entire time.

“Hey,” Dani says, her voice soft and Jamie jumps a little when she touches the small of her back with her fingertips. “You okay?”

Jamie looks at her, this woman she hasn’t known for very long—for so little time that it aches with each breath—and lets herself try and memorize her, the moments they’ve spent together. Memorize her grin and her pink lips; her blonde hair drifting in front of her eyes and how her arms feel around Jamie; the sound of her laugh and the way she whispers that question. 

And Rebecca may have been joking just the night before, but Jamie understands how _right_ she’d been anyway.

She loves Dani. Loves her, _loves_ her and they’re still together—Dani hasn’t even _gone_ yet—and Jamie misses her already with everything inside of her, and she’d promised herself that she wasn’t the kind of person who would do this, and yet—

A thought flutters around in her mind, some silent prayer to a higher power. _Could I maybe—_? or some other request to keep what she has. She knows the answer and it echoes back with the memory of Dani’s expression the night before when they'd been in bed together.

 _I think it just happens sometimes_.

And Jamie hadn’t acknowledged it then because she couldn’t, because she didn’t know how. But now—

“Yeah, I’m great,” she says and Dani smiles that _way_ again, looping her arm through Jamie’s and, when their skin comes to rest together—Jamie hooking Dani closer and ignoring the way Owen’s eyes are dancing again as he watches them—she knows.

_________

A few hours later—when they’re halfway through the second _Home Alone_ with the children and Owen is preparing food for the party with Hannah in the kitchen, Henry tucked away in an office somewhere making business calls despite it being Christmas Eve–Dani’s phone starts ringing. She’s sitting on the couch with Flora and Miles pressed between her and Jamie, and she has to wiggle a bit to get her phone out of her back pocket.

It’s Rebecca, which is strange because they’ve never _once_ spoken on the phone—only through sporadic emails and forwarded flight itinerary—but Dani can’t exactly ignore it. Instead, she manages to untangle herself from Flora and gets to her feet, holding up her phone in answer to Jamie’s questioning look, and then slips out of the room and into the hallway.

“Hello?” is the very first thing she says, drifting down the hall until she comes to an open room that’s set up as a classroom. She goes inside, taking in the little desks that belong to the children, the larger one that must belong to Rebecca, and the shelves and other tables. 

“Dani?” Rebecca says. “Hey, sorry to bother you.”

“Oh, it’s no bother,” Dani rushes out, but that’s not exactly a guarantee because she has no idea what it is. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, definitely. I just wanted to run something by you, actually.”

_________

The “thing” Rebecca needs to run by her, apparently, is Edmund. Apparently.

Edmund who came by Dani’s house to make sure she knew she was still invited to his family’s Christmas party. Who wanted to apologize for how strained things have become. Who wanted to make things _right_ and just so happened to choose a time when she wasn’t in the country to do so.

Edmund who, of course, ran into Rebecca instead. And they got to talking. Then to laughing. Then to going out for drinks together and hitting it off and would it be completely strange and uncomfortable for Dani if Rebecca went to his family’s party with him as his date? Would that be too much?

At first, Dani isn’t certain of the answer because she can’t quite wrap her head around the situation they’ve both found themselves in. The alignment of the universe and the serendipity of it all. They haven’t just done a house-swap, it seems. They’ve swapped best friends as well and, yeah, okay, that’s strange, but how could it be stranger than Dani sleeping with Rebecca’s best friend?

Eddie isn’t an ex, isn’t a current, isn’t even an _almost_ or _maybe_. And, honestly, Dani can’t stop laughing once she understands what it is that’s being asked of her.

“Is that…?” Rebecca begins once Dani’s laughter begins, her voice a little drowned out by the sound. “Oh, I’ve...I’m sorry! I really didn’t mean to make things strange. It’s just...Eddie said that the two of you—”

“No, no!” Dani says, cutting her off and trying to catch her breath. “We weren’t. We _haven’t_ , that is. Of _course_ you have my blessing. I just…” She stops to clear her throat before continuing. “Would you mind giving me a play-by-play of what happens when my mom realizes he’s brought you as a date?”

Rebecca doesn’t understand, but that’s remedied easily enough, and then she’s laughing and agreeing. “Yes, of course, of course.”

They fall into a companionable conversation. Dani stands at the window of the schoolroom, looking out at the snow-covered grounds and the steel-grey sky and tries to remind herself that she isn’t dreaming. 

It’s official, though. This whole thing is the strangest, most unpredictable, and completely manic experience of her entire life, and that includes being proposed to by her childhood best friend and sleeping with a woman she’d known for twenty-four hours. 

“I was so nervous to ask,” Rebecca says after a little while. “I didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes. I actually called Jamie last night to talk to her about it, but I—”

Dani nods, eyes tracking a particularly slight snowflake drifting near the window, coming down from the darkening sky. “She...She mentioned you called, yeah,” she says.

“Did she mention anything else?”

“No,” Dani says. “Not really.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Yeah.”

Silence again, of a different sort.

And then Rebecca says, “Dani?” and Dani stiffens, knowing what is coming before it even arrives. 

“Yeah?”

A brief moment of hesitation, and then: “Do you garden at all? Grow things?”

It comes, seemingly, out of the blue and Dani is caught off guard for exactly as long as it takes her to remember all those secrets Jamie’s whispered to her when they’re in bed together. Flowers and garden plots and trellises at the nicest foster home she’d ever been placed at. A window planter in the city and the spider plant she’d found abandoned on someone’s stoop, drooping and brown and dying. How she revived it. Brought it back to life.

They hadn’t even been talking about Jamie at all, but Dani knows that they don’t _need_ to in order for Rebecca to get her point across. 

“No,” she confesses.

On the other line, she can hear Rebecca frowning. “No?” she repeats, like she’s hoping that saying it aloud will change the answer.

Since the start of the whole thing, Dani has had a voice telling her not to get too invested, to keep one hand on the gun, one finger on the trigger, because there’s very little she can do right now. But it doesn’t matter anymore. It hasn’t in a while because Dani has been crossing her fingers for the longest time, hoping breathlessly that the clock never runs out.

“I can learn,” she says and it’s just as it is with Owen and Hannah and the _children_. Even Henry. Dani wants as many of Jamie’s family members on her side no matter how this thing ends.

“Yeah?” Rebecca asks and Dani doesn’t hesitate this time.

She just says, “Yes.”

_________

“There you are,” says a soft voice over Jamie’s shoulder. “I was about to call for a search and rescue team.”

Jamie perks up from where she’d been leaning against the cool, brick wall of the manor talking to Liza, Henry’s secretary, to see Dani coming towards her, slow footsteps because she’s been drinking wine all evening. When she gets close enough, Jamie reaches out a hand in offering, which Dani uses to balance as she comes to a stop beside her.

“Found me,” Jamie says with a small smile.

“Hi,” Dani greets, smiling at Liza, who is quick to return it, “Dani.”

“Liza,” comes the next introduction and they shake hands kindly and then she drops her cigarette on the cold gravel beneath her feet and stomps it out. “I should probably get back in. I promised Miles a waltz.” She turns her eyes to Jamie and gives her a significant look that Jamie is trying very hard to ignore. “Good to see you again, Jamie.”

“You, too.”

When she’s gone, Dani turns back to her, a curious expression on her face. As if she can see right through whatever mask Jamie is trying to hide behind. As if she knows exactly what had been said before she’d come through that door—like those words are still echoing in the vibrating air around them.

( _Mind if I bum one?_

_’Course._

_Thank you._

_No problem._

_Seems like you’re having a better time this year than last. Should have brought your girlfriend last year too._

_Oh, she’s not my—_

_No?_

_Well, no, it’s...I mean...It’s complicated._

_Really? I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but...it doesn’t_ **_look_ ** _complicated._ )

Inside the house, the sound of _Jingle Bell Rock_ is wafting through the thin December air, fevered and raucous on the backs of a dozen conversations. It’s so noisy that, even from outside, Jamie can hardly hear herself think. And now that Dani is out with her—that pretty, purple dress and thick, grey cardigan; her stockinged legs and brown boots—she’s even worse off.

In the brief time that they’ve known one another, Jamie has never seen Dani in a dress. As busy as they’ve been, she’s never really given any circumstance where it could be a possibility much of a thought. And yet here Dani is, the soft fabric brushing her knees and smiling in this way that’s sort of making Jamie nervous. She clutches her arm firmly until they’re as close as they can get without being pressed together.

“Having fun?” Jamie asks, quirking an eyebrow at the blush from the wine on the little bit of Dani’s pale chest that she can see, spreading up her neck to her cheeks. Her eyes have gone a little soft, a little hazy.

“It’s nice,” Dani says. “Been a while since I’ve been to a party where people aren’t trying to trap me beneath the mistletoe with my best friend. Since I’ve felt...normal.”

Words fail Jamie. She drops the touch away and nods, looking back out at the dark spread of night over the white, snow-covered grass surrounding the house. She nods because she knows the feeling; because the children are inside laughing and dancing and happy; because Owen and Hannah are speaking softly in a language they’re creating just for them; because Rebecca is thousands of miles away and Jamie has no idea where her family is, where or how her brothers spend Christmas. And there’s something in her chest about that, about all of it. About the way Dani looks with the white lights strung around the front door against her profile.

“You look beautiful,” Jamie says because if she thinks about it anymore, she’s going to lose her nerve. “Did I tell ya’ that?”

The smile this gets her is lovely, the dimples around Dani’s lips and the way she pulls the bottom one between her teeth at the attention. A hand slips into her own, fingers lacing together.

“Thank you,” Dani whispers. Her eyes drop down to Jamie’s vest over the only button-down she owns without dirt stains on it. “So do you.”

She reaches out and tugs a little on Jamie’s tie. It’s an old one—a hand-me-down from Owen, if she’s remembering that correctly—and she’d had to watch a YouTube video to get it tied correctly, but she thinks she did a decent enough job.

Her breath catches in her throat. They’re standing so close that, if Dani were to just look up from where she’s focused on the tie, all it would take would be a little dip of Jamie’s chin to kiss her. “Thanks,” she says.

“Why are you out here?” Dani asks and, when she looks up, she takes a little step back to put some distance between them. “You’ve seemed a little…” She pauses, looking like she’s thinking this over. “Is there something wrong?”

Jamie shakes her head. “No, not at all,” She says, because nothing _is_ wrong. Things are just maybe trying to turn into something that’s _right_ for once. “Can I show you somethin’ real quick?” and, when Dani nods, she pulls her hand to lead her slowly across the grounds and around the house.

It’s not a far walk, just a bit away, and their feet kick snow up as they go. It’s still cold, but warmer, perhaps, for the alcohol they’ve had to drink and Jamie isn’t shivering at all. Dani comes willingly, holding Jami’s hand all the tighter—taking the form of something Jamie never thought she’d have.

She doesn’t question where they’re going until they’re nearing the green house, letting out a joking, “Not gonna kill me, are you?”

Jamie chuckles and shakes her head, but doesn’t stop moving, leading Dani into the greenhouse, among the empty shelves and bare tables. Well, bare save for a small package resting on one of them. Once inside, she releases the other woman so she can move closer to the present waiting for her.

“Jamie, is—” she begins, but Jamie cuts her off.

“It’s for you,” Jamie tells her. “Go ahead and open it.”

Dani shakes her head. “You didn’t have to—”

“I know. Open it.”

Dani does, ripping the paper neatly at its taped edges to reveal a small, white box. Shaking fingers take hold of the lid and lift it until she sees what it is, and then the lid is being set aside so she can pull it out. 

“Is this—” she says, but she stops before finishing, turning the ornament slowly in her hands like she’s scared it’s going to break.

“It’s...There wasn’t enough time to get a picture to put in a frame or anything, so it’s just our thumbprints,” Jamie says. “The kids helped me paint it while you were talking to Rebecca earlier. Had Hannah and Owen and Henry put their own thumbprints on, too. Flora picked out the inscription.”

Dani thumbs over Jamie’s neatly written _So You Can Have Us Wherever You Are_ as Jamie speaks and there’s hardly any light coming in through the glass walls and ceiling, save for what’s escaping the strung lights on the house in the distance, but Jamie can see the watery shine of her eyes all the same.

“She...We were talking about having one another and...how nice that is and so Flora asked who _you_ have and...I said you could have us for a while. While you’re here,” Jamie explains, trying to keep her voice steady. “But Flora thought, this way…” She clears her throat. “This way you can have us when you’re home, too. This little piece of us. To remember us all by.”

Jamie hardly has any time to lock her knees and brace herself before Dani is crossing the room and flinging herself into her arms. She hugs her tight, face tucked into Jamie’s neck and Jamie hugs her back, closing her eyes. Memorizing how it feels. Something warm and wet slides against her skin, dripping down against her shoulder, and she knows in an instant that Dani is crying, her body trembling in soft shakes.

“Hey,” she whispers. “I’m sorry if I upset you. I just thought—”

Dani pulls back without moving her arms, leaving it so they’re as close as they’ve ever been. “It’s amazing,” she says without hesitation. “I love it. It’s perfect. I don’t…” She clears her throat and a tear slides down her cheek so Jamie reaches up to thumb it away and ends up just leaving her hand there, cupping the side of Dani’s jaw. “This is the nicest present anyone’s ever given me.”

Anything that Jamie thinks she could say becomes tangled in her throat and she can hardly swallow around them, let alone speak. She leans in and presses their foreheads together, meeting Dani’s watery eyes and slipping her hand into Dani’s cardigan to rest against the dip of her back. They stay like that for a long time—Jamie isn’t actually sure how long—and then she finally finds the words.

“You deserve so much more than just this,” she says and she can tell by the way Dani’s eyes shift that she’s caught off guard by this. “You do. You’re strong and smart and beautiful. And...supportive. You’re such a good friend and an amazing human being. You’ve shared your time with us and let me have a shot to get to know you better and that’s more than I know what to do with if I’m being honest.” She lets this settle for a moment, just long enough to give it shape and form, and then goes on. “This is all that I can give you.”

It’s more words than she’s strung together in a long time, and certainly more sentimental than she’s had the strength to be in so long. But it’s easy, natural even, in the dim lighting of the greenhouse, the bitter cold, and the way Dani is looking at her.

“I love you,” Dani whispers, so softly that Jamie can hardly hear it. There’s a ringing in her ears and she’s not sure where it’s coming from. In a flash, some of the intimacy in Dani’s gaze slips away as she says, “All of you,” so quickly that it makes Jamie dizzy. “I know it hasn’t been very long, but...you’ve given me so much more than just this.”

It’s something. Not quite there yet. But the closest either of them has come.

“For a really long time…” Dani pasues and thinks this over, gathering her thoughts, and Jamie’s fingers twitch because she wants to reach out and touch her, but she doesn’t. She just keeps her distance for now and gives Dani enough space to continue. “For a long time, I felt sort of...trapped...in playing a role.” She scoffs, shaking her head. “ _Roles_ ,” she corrects. “Pretending to be different people that could...be different things. Something for _everyone_.” She looks up and meets Jamie’s eyes again. “But...I realized the other day that I haven’t been doing that. Not with you. With you...I’m me. The real me.” Jamie finally lets herself reach out to catch Dani’s hand, squeezing it gently. “Who I want to be.”

“Well,” Jamie begins, smiling. “I like this you. The real you. I like her a lot. Thank you...for letting me get to know her.”

Dani laughs and hugs her again, and then pulls back to kiss her, hard and fast, before pulling her out of the green house and back to the manor. The party has fallen a little quiet, though there are a few people dancing, paired off and swaying slowly to another Christmas song while others stand around talking. Jamie can see Miles and Liz dancing and laughing. Flora is in the corner, leaning back against her uncle as she blinks a little tiredly and she waves happily when they see her. Hannah is swaying softly with Owen, her head resting on his shoulder as he holds her affectionately.

“Do you wanna dance?” Jamie asks, tilting her head to meet Dani’s eyes.

“Me?” she asks and Jamie rolls her eyes, laughing a little. “Oh, I haven’t danced in—”

“Neither have I,” Jamie tells her and then she pulls her by the hand onto the dance floor.

For a second, the two of them just look at one another as they try to figure out the logistics of how they want to do this. And then Jamie plucks up enough courage to slide her palms around Dani’s hips, coming to rest on her lower back. Dani wraps her arms around Jamie’s neck and it’s sort of like the hug they just shared in the greenhouse, but so different.

Jamie can’t deny anything from here: not how close they are, how they’re looking at one another, the way Dani’s fingers are drawing circles on the delicate skin of her neck. It would be a good moment to kiss her, but there are people around and it’s not that Jamie is ashamed, it’s that this place offers no privacy and she’d really rather do it when they don’t have to keep it family-friendly.

Dani seems to come to the same conclusion at the same time, turning her head to rest it on Jamie’s shoulder, coming closer until their bodies are pressed together. They’re only moving a little bit, not nearly as much as everyone else, but it still counts, she thinks. It has to.

Across the floor, Owen whispers something to Hannah and they’re both watching them—Owen with a silly, little smile on his lips, Hannah with a serious look of contemplation. She smiles as soon as Jamie meets her gaze and Jamie knows that she can’t hide from the seriousness of what she’s doing with Dani, if she ever even could before. She turns her eyes away, unwilling to be put under any willful observation anymore than she already is.

She presses her cheek against the crown of Dani’s head and closes her eyes. There’ll be time to deal with that later—to worry about Dani leaving and what will come _after_ . For Flora to come over and wrap her arms around their waists so she can be a part of their dance, too. For Miles to join her, for _Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree_ to come on and bring everyone out of their pairs and further into the middle. For Jamie to grab Dani’s hand and lead her into a twirl and for Dani to give her that _smile_ again.

But, for now, she just keeps swaying.

_________

That night. Later. Having a drink on Jamie’s couch in their party clothes, _White Christmas_ playing on the television.

“I didn’t get you anything,” Dani says, the taste of her heartbeat throbbing on the back of her tongue. “I feel bad.”

“Don’t,” Jamie tells her, the red wine making her tongue sharp.

On the screen, Bing Crosby kisses Rosemary Clooney right where anyone could see them. Their thighs are hot and pressed together and Dani’s been itching to crawl out of her skin since that morning in the shower, Jamie on her knees below her and Dani holding onto the towel bar for dear life.

What she says against Jamie’s lips when she sets her wine glass aside to get closer:

“Let me make it up to you?”

Fingers are swiftly tugging Jamie’s suspenders down her arms, undoing the buttons of her trousers as Jamie’s feet knock against her coffee table, trying to get into a better position.

What she whispers desperately:

“Yes. _Yes_. Absolutely.”

So Dani slides to the floor on her knees, tugs Jamie’s trousers down all the way, sets her mouth to work, and _does_.

_________

It’s fine, of course. It should be totally fine. Expected, even.

Because, really, Jamie has known this was coming all along and she thought she’d begun to make peace with that (even as she’d been existing in some world adjacent to her own, where there were no consequences or endings or return flights) but apparently she hasn’t. Why did she even let herself pretend? So stupid and naive and after all these days, all these tickings of the clock—here’s a crazy surprise!—Dani’s flight is early on December 26th.

Jamie’s heart might has well shred in two, but—

_________

Back up.

Flora calls early in the morning, her request already begging off the tip of her tongue before Jamie even answers the call properly. Hannah is there and, because Hannah is there and because his mother has been gone nearly a year now, Owen is, too. She wants Jamie to come, too, wants to spend Christmas with her and—if Dani is there—Dani, too.

“It snowed again! Uncle Henry got me a keyboard and I can play Hot Cross Buns in dog barks. Miles got a video game we can all play together and—”

“If you don’t want to,” Jamie mouths at Dani, who is lying ruffled and naked in the bed beside her, but Dani shakes her head.

“I want to,” she whispers, and her gaze is damning even in the bright and airy morning light.

“Flora?” Jamie says. “We’ll be there soon, okay?”

Once Flora has hung up, Dani snuggles into Jamie again and they close their eyes for a little while. Jamie is getting better at pretending they have forever. Given enough time, she thinks she might actually get what she wants.

“Are you sure you want to leave this bed?” she whispers.

What it means: I don’t want you to go, not ever.

What Dani hears: let’s stay just a little while longer.

They linger in the warmth of the bed and it’s Dani that slips away first, wanting a shower, wanting clothes, wanting to get a move on because it’s her last day, but Jamie doesn’t know that last part. 

All she knows is the feeling of being left in her bed alone, the sheets on the other side becoming cold again at an alarming rate.

_________

The drive to the house is broken up by the cold pump of warming air through the vents of Jamie’s ancient truck. It shudders its way across down and down the manor’s driveway, finally coming to a jarring halt as snow begins to fall again, the clots greyish and iron, having been wet and frozen. They pelt the windshield noisily and Dani is almost glad for the distraction, glad for the way it makes Jamie grab onto her as they hurry into the house.

It seems like a good enough place to choke on the smoke of what she’s been trying to forget.

“Dani,” says Flora in that high voice of hers when they’re in the kitchen making hot chocolate again. “Couldn’t you stay here forever?”

A halting question. She’s close enough that Dani can wrap an arm around her small shoulders and tuck her in close as she stirs the milk in the pot.

“I wish I could,” says Dani. “But I have to go back eventually, right?”

Flora doesn’t seem to agree with this. Neither does Miles, who is leaning against the counter with Jamie. Owen and Hannah are sitting at the table, sipping tea and watching the whole thing unfold. They are wearing twin pinched expressions, like they’re waiting for the final shoe to drop, and Dani is careful not to look at them for too long.

“But you’ll come back and see us, right?” Miles asks.

“I hope so,” Dani tells him, but doesn’t say anything about time needing to permit something like that and the cost of plane tickets. “If that’s alright with you guys.”

“I can’t say I’d hate having someone else to take over hot chocolate duties again,” Owen chimes in, a charming smile on his lips. “Not to mention keep Jamie out of our hair when she’s being cranky.”

“I’m not cranky,” Jamie says and Hannah laughs.

“No, you’re not dear,” she cuts in and Jamie looks proud for about two seconds before she completes the thought, “but Dani certainly does have a knack for softening your...rougher edges.”

Owen grins. “I’ll drink to that.” He lifts his mug and Hannah bumps her own against it.

“Jamie does like you very much,” Flora says, too clever for her own good, and Dani can feel the burning, buzzing heat of Jamie’s gaze on the side of her face. “Has she told you that?” She turns and faces Jamie. “Jamie, tell her! Maybe she’ll stay!”

This is, unfortunately, the absolute wrong thing to say. There’s a flash of something in Jamie’s eyes when Dani looks at her. They drop down to her hands on the island and she pulls them away, turning so she can lean back against it, making it impossible for Dani to see her face again.

“Doubt that’d change much, Flora,” she says, a note of blatant agony in her voice. “But good looking out.”

The mood is set too far off-course for it to be remedied easily after that. Dani finishes making the hot chocolate in silence and then there are more Christmas movies to watch, presents for Miles and Flora to show off. A life for Dani to try her hardest to be a part of for as long as possible.

She spends the day doing her best to plant her feet enough to leave a mark, but she can’t help but imagine what it will be like once she leaves. What Jamie will do. 

Will she mourn her for a little while? Will they try to stay in touch for a little while, but eventually fall apart? How long will Jamie wait before finding someone else to fill Dani’s side of the bed? How much will the children like this new woman? Or Owen or Hannah or even Rebecca?

There’s a meal around the table and conversations that have Jamie laughing with her entire body. Dani joins in, has no trouble doing so, but can’t get herself to stop thinking about what it would be like if she just _stayed_. If she could. 

And then she can’t stop berating herself for rushing things along so far. She loves Jamie, yes. There’s no doubt in her mind that this is true, but it hasn’t even been a week. That’s too little time for her entire world to be shaken up, isn’t it? And she’s leaving in the morning.

Worse: Jamie might not even feel the same way. She said love wasn’t for her, relationships weren’t something she saw herself doing. Maybe she meant it. Maybe Dani isn’t the exception she’s been hoping she might be.

There are too many variables, too many possibilities, and Jamie is already haunting every one of them.

_________

Later, Dani says, “Good Christmas?” and Jamie leans against her on the couch in front of the fire, trying to decide if she should answer honestly or not. 

The children are busy in another room, the others having drifted off eventually to leave them alone for the first time since that morning and Jamie isn’t sure what to do with that.

She wants to say _yes_ because it _was_ —she woke up in Dani’s arms in the warm cocoon of her bed and she spent the day surrounded by people who she is beginning to let love her—but there is something else that Christmas will do and that is take Dani away once this whole thing has to be over.

“As far as Christmases go,” she says.

Dani laughs, this sound that makes Jamie feel very, very old and like a child all at once. “You’re always going to hate it, aren’t you?”

 _Yes_ , Jamie does not say. _As long as it makes good on its promise to whisk you far away._

_________

A conversation between the children and Dani when they go to say their goodnights:

“Are you coming back tomorrow?” asks Flora.

A frown. Heartbroken. Strained. “I wish I could, but I can’t,” says Dani.

“Why not?” says Miles, a strange child, so serious. 

They are standing in the front hall, the others, save Henry, gathered around as Jamie waits by the door and Dani kneels on the floor in front of the children.

“I have to fly home tomorrow,” she says because it’s something she can’t contain anymore. “Early in the morning.” Her fingers swipe a lock of hair from her face so she can see the way her news has affected the children better. “Rebecca will be back after that, though. Miss Jessel.”

“We’ll miss you,” Flora says, quiet. Only seven, but she speaks so solemnly. A girl that knows how much luck is contained in being able to say goodbye at all. “You _will_ come back, won’t you?”

Behind them, Owen is saying something to Hannah and Dani knows without looking over her shoulder that it’s Jamie’s reaction they’re discussing. Her heart drums in her throat. She swallows around it. There were better times to drop that particular bomb, better places to _be_ with Jamie when she did, but she is not in any of them. She is _here_.

“I will. I promise.”

Flora hugs her with her arms thrown around Dani’s neck. Dani hugs her back and then Miles replaces her and she is hugging his somewhat stiff, small body. When she gets to her feet, Hannah is there, hugging her as well and kissing her cheek, expressing joy in having spent time with her. Owen’s hug is engulfing and secure and Dani has a feeling that he’s saying goodbye for more than just himself with the way he looks over at Jamie when he pulls away.

This whole thing has been a dream.

It’s a wonder she has not had to pay for it before this moment, but she does now, and this is the price:

Jamie does not meet her eyes as she opens the door and lets Dani step out. 

On the drive back to her flat, they hardly speak and Dani can hardly bring herself to be surprised.

When Jamie pulls the truck up to the door at the side of the pub that leads up to her flat, she throws the thing in park and does not turn the car off. As if she has no intention of coming inside.

“I’m sorry,” Dani says, trying to piece the rest of what she needs to say together in her head. “I know that...I should have said something sooner, I just...I didn’t want to spoil our time together by—”

“By what? Telling me the truth? Preparing me?” Jamie doesn’t look at her as she speaks. Instead, she keeps her hands on the steering wheel and looks out the windshield at the side of the pub.

“I just didn’t—”

“It’s fine, Dani,” Jamie says, but it very clearly _is not_. “I’m just...I knew this wasn’t forever and you don’t...It’s not like you owe me anything or like we can—” she tries, sounding uneasy now.

“No,” says Dani. “I know.”

There’s a wall between them that has been building slowly and steadily since that first kiss outside Jamie’s flat. It’s grown stronger with every moment they’ve lost to the inevitable slip of time, and it feels solid now. Finished. Unshakeable.

It makes Dani want to _weep_ —scream and cry and yank at each brick keeping them apart until her hands are bloody and there’s nothing left but empty space, something she can _fill_ with something else. Something like _forever_ and _always_ and _keep me keep me keep me_.

“You should go inside,” Jamie says, nodding at the building through the windows. “Get some rest.”

And it’s said so casually, as if telling Dani to go inside without her without acknowledging that they’ve spent _every night_ of Dani’s visit in that apartment together doesn’t make it feel like something is being wrenched from inside her chest. Something important and vital that she needs to keep breathing, only it’s gone now and she’s not sure how long she’ll be able to survive without it.

What she wants to say: _I love you please don’t push me away don’t make me go I love you and it’s like being burned alive because it hurts so much and I can’t stop it please don’t_ —

She doesn’t say that.

But she does reach up and touch Jamie’s face, watch the way Jamie’s eyes flutter closed; Jamie catches her hand and presses it against her cheek. They breathe there, together and apart and as close as they will be for the rest of their lives maybe.

“Come inside with me,” says Dani, not quite ready to let go of this last taste of what _forever_ could be like. “I don’t want to leave it like this.”

“Like what?” says Jamie, the words slipping past her tongue so quick even as her eyes are wet and her hands are shaking and just that morning Dani pressed this beautiful woman into the mattress they’ve shared for four nights, snaked a hand between her legs and muffled her sighs with her own mouth, and the thought of letting this moment slip from their fingers, leaving Jamie alone to _bleed_ —

Dani doesn’t answer. She just kisses Jamie breathless, leans into her and doesn’t pull away, couldn’t if she wanted to and she doesn’t want to, no, no, no never.

_________

That last night together: Dani makes love to Jamie against the wall of the living room before they even get to the bed; Jamie starts crying in bed when her fingers find Dani’s warmth for one of the last times.

They talk very little, as if the two of them are afraid of what they might say given half the opportunity. Jamie funnels all those things she’s never gotten around to saying into each kiss, each twist of her wrist, each flick of her tongue. Dani pulls her so close there will be bruises on her skin in the morning and Jamie doesn’t _care_. She can’t care.

“I’m going to miss you,” slips from Dani’s lips around the third round, once she’s turned around again and collapsed on the bed and Jamie is dropping the strap-on to the floor. She’s crying and it’s dark, but Jamie knows this because she’s crying too. She lowers herself down and Dani holds her suffocatingly tight. 

Every moment they’ve shared together crushes together in Jamie’s chest like shattered glass, bleeding her with every breath, and she _cannot_ do this, but she doesn’t have a choice.

She never did.

“I miss you,” she says, present tense because it’s _true_. “I miss you so much.” 

Dani sobs into Jamie’s hair and Jamie kisses her and kisses her, weary and sore and completely hollowed out as she wishes for another—any other—ending than this one.

_________

Dani wakes to her early alarm and an empty bed the next morning, the covers drawn up on Jamie’s side of the bed. There’s a little piece of paper, folded and waiting, on Jamie’s pillow and the apartment is cold and still. Silent. 

She is alone.

 _I don’t know how to say goodbye_ , the note says. _But these last few days with you have been some of the only that I’ve actually_ —

On and on. Words of love that catch in Dani’s throat as the sun begins to crest over the trees outside. 

She wonders where Jamie is—where she’s _gone_ now that she’s written this note instead of facing Dani in those last few moments—but she knows that it doesn’t matter. It won’t change anything.

The day after Christmas, Dani sits alone in bed and holds Jamie’s letter to her chest, unable to even bring herself to cry again, and the worst part is this:

She can’t even ask herself what else she might have been expecting.

..

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bum bum bum.
> 
> i am vaguely sorry for making you depressed on New Year’s Eve.


	5. anything can happen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is 15k of mild angst, super cheesy and dramatic love declarations, and a happy ending. 
> 
> writing this has been a Wild Ride. i hope you all enjoy the last installment of this. 
> 
> the title of this chapter comes from the same-named song from The Holiday's soundtrack but only bc i like the name. the song itself is too sad for this chapter imo. i recommend "Cry" or "Maestro" as listening music instead.
> 
> also: i wrote all but like 1k of this today, so all misspellings and errors are there on purpose i promise. please think about this as you're reading.

Snow drifts past the bedroom window like constellations, wind brushing it into shapes curled like white ribbons standing stark against the rising sun. Dani sits still on the edge of the bed, carved of ice and marble, with numb fingers and numb toes and numb lips. She is trying to think of nothing, but, failing at this, is thinking of everything all at once. The history of herself crushing itself compact to fit into the infinity of all things Jamie. She does not know how long she has been sitting there.

With her eyes closed, she can very nearly pretend that Jamie is with her—that she’s going to walk through the bedroom door any moment, smiling easy and bright. Saying, _You really gonna keep a girl waiting, Poppins?_

Dani opens her eyes and looks down at the rug beneath her socked feet. One fist is curled in the note Jamie left behind, clenching to it tight as she tries to fight back the tears. There isn’t anything to be done. It’s no one’s fault but there are a million reasons why Jamie isn’t here and almost all of them have to do with her. The understanding of this tastes like copper on her tongue.

Shr thinks she can smell a hint of Jamie’s perfume on her clothes. A shiver races down her spine when she remembers that same smell, the _taste_ of Jamie’s skin, scraping her teeth against Jamie’s collarbones. But she needs to stop thinking about that.

Part of her wants to ask herself how she could have _possibly_ let this happen, but she knows the real answer has nothing to do with choice. For her entire life, she’s thought love would be something that would knock her off her feet, hold her down, head underwater and running out of air as her mind raced to catch up with the rest of her body.

But it isn’t. Or wasn’t with Jamie.

It’s quiet. Simple.

Falling in love with Jamie had been the easiest thing in the world. Dani hadn’t even noticed it was happening until she hit the ground, and there’s something about it that feels so unreal. Because it’s like all she’d done was _blink_ and there it was. Everything she thought she’d never have was with her in an instant. Jamie touched her with gentle hands, combed slender fingers through Dani’s hair. She laughed at Dani’s jokes and rested her head on Dani’s shoulder when they sat side-by-side. Jamie held her hand for the entirety of the Christmas Eve party and wrapped her tight in her arms when they slept together each night.

And now it’s all gone. Over. Finished. Dani is here for now, but soon she will be somewhere else. Somewhere far. And Jamie will still be where she is, in this life she’s made for herself, and there’s nothing about that situation which Dani can immediately remedy. She can’t uproot her life on a whim, even if everything within her is _begging_ her to at this very moment.

But she can’t do that. Can she?

No. She’ll go home. Be somewhere else. Move on when she can. With time, she thinks it should be possible. At least she’ll know that Jamie is okay. That she’s loved and taken care of. Even if Dani can’t have her.

“Fuck,” Dani murmurs, and she can’t hold the tears back anymore. A sob wracks through her body, shaking her as she collapses into the nest of Jamie’s blankets.

She lies there, crying, for as long as she possibly can.

_________

“Wake up!”

“ _Shit_ —”

Three hours after creeping out of her own apartment in the dead of night, Jamie bolts upright on the couch in the sitting room. 

Owen is standing above her, looking confused and a little disappointed.

Owen looking at her like that is normally the result of some silly attempt on her part to ruin her own life, and it’s the only thing Jamie knows of that can _immediately_ give her a headache. This is no exception. Except, this time, the headache was lurking already, waiting—the same one that’s been there since she fell to the couch after arriving back at the house and let herself cry until she eventually fell asleep, which was better than doing what she had been doing, which was this: remembering Dani’s eyes as they shimmered with tears in her truck the night before, how she’d been curled into the blankets when Jamie slipped out of bed; how Dani was gentle and confident and it has _never_ been like that before, not with anyone, and Jamie’s been in love with her possibly since she met her and—okay, yeah, wow, slow down a little—

Jamie takes a deep breath of relief when she realizes it’s just Owen—that she’s not in any danger—and stops trying to claw for the ceramic bowl of potpourri on the table in front of her, managing a more coherent: “ _What_?”

“Why are you sleeping on the couch?” Owen asks, crossing his arms in a fatherly way that would send Jamie reeling if she wasn’t already so used to seeing it. “I thought you’d be with Dani until she left this morning.”

Jamie blinks at him. Tries to wrap her head around that. “What? I’m not allowed to sleep on the couch now?” she asks and Owen frowns even deeper. “Nobody bothered to tell me.”

“Alright, then. Sass right out the gate. Care to tell me what’s going on?” He shakes his head, looking exasperated. “I assume it has to do with Dani.”

At this, Jamie scoffs. “It doesn’t,” she lies, getting defensive. “Why would it—”

“You’re not too old for a grounding, young lady,” Owen says and Jamie freezes, lips parted in surprise. Normally something like that would be said in the form of a light-hearted jest, but Owen actually seems _aggravated_ with her, which is certainly a first. “If you’re going to mope around and lash out for no reason, at least be honest about why you’re doing it.”

“I’m not moping,” Jamie hisses, but Owen just rolls his eyes. Jamie takes a deep breath and rubs a hand over her face. “I know. I’m just...I know that I’m probably overreacting, but this is...I can’t just go back to normal, okay? Act like nothing happened. Not yet.”

“Good thing that’s not what I’m telling you to do,” he says. “I know this last week has been...a lot. And I know how you feel about her, but if you close everyone off we can’t actually help you, Jamie. I’m not saying to come out of mourning. I’m just saying that it isn’t as if anyone has _died_ and that’s how you’re acting. So maybe—”

“I’m _not_ in mourning,” Jamie cuts in, looking up at him. She can feel heat flare in her chest and on the back of neck. Even as she says it, though, her eyes are burning again and she has to swallow to keep herself from crying. “I’m _pissed_ off! She could have told me, you know? She had so many chances to tell me when she was leaving and she just _didn’t_. She just came in here and made me care about her and now she’s gone. Like she—”

She stops herself, breathing heavily. Owen’s hard gaze has gone sympathetic, even though Jamie is certain that he can’t possibly understand the depth of the situation. She hasn’t exactly been _open_ about it with anyone. Not even with herself, it turns out.

“Okay, so be angry, then,” Owen tells her. “Hate her guts. Whatever you need to do to move on.”

“I don’t hate her,” Jamie says, quieter now. She drops her face to her hands, covering her eyes and pressing her fingers to them _hard_ to keep the tears at bay. “I love her.”

There are footsteps and then she feels the couch shift as Owen sits down beside her, wrapping his arms around Jamie’s back and tugging her into a hug. Jamie finally loses her battle and lets herself be tucked into his arms as she cries. Owen pats her back and waits it out. 

“Yeah,” he says simply. “I thought so.”

One of his arms pulls away and Jamie feels him moving around a little before a handkerchief is pressed into her hand. She pulls away, takes it, and swipes at her eyes, turning away so that Owen can’t see her.

“I just feel like such an idiot,” she says, sniffing and balling her left hand into a fist, nails biting into her palm. “That’s really the sort of thing I shouldn’t have let happen.”

“Maybe,” Owen says, and Jamie’s chest tightens a little at his voice. Owen’s trying so hard to be supportive, to put Jamie back on her feet, and he has no experience in this kind of thing, clearly. But he hasn’t run away yet.

“But I didn’t _know_ ,” Jamie continues, mostly just saying aloud the things that she’s been thinking all this time. “And it’s not like this can change anything, and I just—” She darts her eyes to Owen, who is looking at her like he would glue everything back together with his bare hands if he could. “And I just feel so _stupid_.”

“You’re not stupid, Jamie.”

“Yeah?” she asks. “You sure about that?”

Owen nods, completely serious. Not taking the bait. “You aren’t. No one can help who they fall in love with or how. It’s normal and okay and it definitely isn’t stupid.”

Jamie starts crying again. “It’s not okay,” she babbles. “It isn’t. Because I didn’t know being in love would feel like this and I miss her so much and I know I shouldn’t be but I’m _so mad at her_.”

“Okay, okay,” Owen says, voice calm as he shakes his head and watches his friend fall apart for the third time in five minutes. He wraps his arms around her again, pulling her into another hug. “It’s okay.”

They sit there like that for a while. Jamie crying and Owen hugging her and rocking her and waiting it out. When she runs out of tears, Jamie pulls away and blows her nose in Owen’s handkerchief, bumping their shoulders together.

Owen cracks a grin. “I love you, too, you know,” he says, “but you better not start crying like that over it.”

Jamie grabs a decorative pillow from the side of the couch and hits him over the head with it.

_________

“Hello?”

“Hey, Rebecca, um...Good morning! Sorry, to, uh...I don’t know. I just—”

“Dani, Dani. It’s okay. Deep breaths.”

Something sharp stabs her beneath her ribs, slicing into her neatly and making Dani drop the sweater she was folding to the mattress top. She has approximately twenty minutes until her Lyft arrives to take her to the train station and she’s already running behind. The events of the morning set her back a good amount and now she’s rushing around trying to make sure she doesn’t forget anything.

If she does, she won’t be able to come back for it.

Rebecca sounds calm and steady and Dani’s panic starts to kick into an even higher gear when she realizes this. Is she overreacting? Is she reading too much into the situation? 

She doesn’t know.

She doesn’t _think_ she is, but how can she be sure? It’s not as if Jamie is around for her to ask. 

“Are you alright?” Rebecca asks it with a little laugh like it’s a normal day.

Like everything is totally ordinary.

“Yeah, I’m…” Dani begins, but, “No, really, it’s just…” She trails off and takes a deep breath, closing her eyes to gather herself. “Have you heard from Jamie? At all? Like...I just mean...She kind of...rushed off this morning and I just want to be sure she’s okay.”

Silence descends on the air surrounding her. Dani stares down at her phone, sitting on the bed with the little speakerphone button lit up, and holds her breath. Everything she’s just said bounces around in her head, ponging around viciously and making her ears ring, her temples throb. 

She hears Rebecca shuffling a bit on the other line. “I haven’t heard from her, no,” comes the answer, and Dani’s shoulders deflate a little. “Is everything okay?”

Dani hesitates for only a second, and then finishes folding her last sweater and leans down to zip her suitcase shut. “Yeah,” she tells her. “I just…” She sits down on the edge of the bed, picking up her phone to cradle it in her hands as she says this next part, “I’m in love with her.”

Rebecca makes this shocked noise. “Wait, you’re—”

“And she...she didn’t know I’m leaving today and we had this _thing_ —”

“A _thing_? What do you—”

“—left this note about not being able to say goodbye—”

“Dani—”

“—to even _tell_ her that I love her and I know I can’t just—”

“Hang on, you—”

“—and my flight leaves in four hours.”

“Wait, Dani, I need to…” Rebecca pauses for a long moment, and then sighs before continuing. “Jamie...You’re in love with her and she left without saying goodbye and now you’re calling me to see if I can check in on her? To make sure she’s okay?”

Put like that, Dani can understand how it sounds. She swallows thickly.

“I just...I can’t leave if I know that she—”

“That she what?”

“That she feels the same way.” 

It comes out in a breathless rush—the sort of stream-of-consciousness confession that she would normally regret releasing for weeks and weeks. It requires no forethought or planning because it is simply this: 

The honest truth.

And she can play-act that she can hide from that as much as she wants, but she knows that this cannot possibly change. Because if there is the slightest chance—the tiniest gamble—that Jamie might love her back, then it’s game over.

Dani won’t be able to leave her even if she absolutely wanted to.

“Oh,” Rebecca says, sounding just as shell-shocked as Dani feels. “That’s...significant.”

“Yeah,” Dani says. “I know.”

This is uncharted territory. Dani has never been at such a loss in her life and she can’t pretend like she would change it for anything. Like time machines are real and she could just go back and fix everything. Take it all back before she could lose her heart to someone who can’t be hers. 

She hears Rebecca breathing on the other line, like she’s readjusting for whatever is coming next. Preparing herself. “Dani, I’m going to ask you something, okay? And I know we’re not exactly the best of friends or anything, so I’m sorry if it comes out as harsh or whatever, but I really think it’s something you need to answer.”

Dani nods. “Okay.”

“Okay, Dani, seriously. What the _fuck_ are you doing?”

Dani blinks in response, not having expected Rebecca’s tone to shift so dramatically so quickly. Her stomach rolls. She frowns, trying to come up with an answer. 

“Sitting here?” she tries.

“You just said you can’t actually _leave_ and go back to your home, your _life_ , if there’s a chance that Jamie feels the same way as you,” Rebecca says, ignoring Dani’s answer. “If the girl you’ve been shagging for the last week—”

“Hey,” Dani squeaks weakly in protest.

“—could maybe, possibly, probably have feelings for you. Serious feelings. Like the ones you have. Because you’re in love with her.” A sigh, long and suffering. “Dani, I know we don’t know each other very well, but I _know_ you’re smarter than that.”

“Smarter than what?” Dani asks. “You said it yourself, we’ve only been together a _week._ It’s not like I can just forget my life back in Ohio—my _family_ and _friends_ and _job_ —because I went and caught feelings for a girl on vacation. That’s not how it works.”

“Says who?” Rebecca demands. “Who’s to _say_ that’s not how it works? Why can’t it work like that?”

It’s kind of like being slapped in the face. Dani nearly lifts a hand to cradle her metaphorically injured cheek. 

“What am I supposed to do? Skip my flight? Quit my job? Move into her flat and live happily ever after?” Even as she says it, Dani’s posture is shrinking. “And what if that’s not what she wants?”

Rebecca sounds _done_ when she says, “You’re making everything sound a bit extreme, but _yes_ ! Why _can’t_ you skip your flight? Why _can’t_ you stay just a bit longer? Figure out if this is something you want? Something that can _last_?”

“Why is it on _me_? If she wanted this, she could have—”

“Dani, I know Jamie, okay?” Rebecca says. “I love her dearly and I know her so well and she is an absolute _buffoon_ when it comes to relationships. We’re talking about a woman who would rather talk to a shrub than to an actual human being. Someone who turned down all my attempts at friendship for five _months_ . Who hates showy things and emotional moments and vulnerability so much that she’s been single for as long as I’ve known her. For as long as _any of us_ have known her.”

Dani’s eyes fall to rest idly on the floor. She feels like she’s going to be sick. Her hands are shaking. _Everything_ is shaking. Mostly, she’s just trying to remember how to breathe.

“She’s willing to make a clean break and let you go even though she’s _crazy_ about you because she thinks that’s what she has to do,” Rebecca continues. “Jamie might try to act tough and untouchable, but she has _such_ a big heart and she’s so frightened of it being broken that she keeps it hidden away as best as she can. But she didn’t with you. When I talked to her the other night, it was like she couldn’t stop smiling. I don’t think she even realized she was doing it. And if she thought for one second that what you really wanted was to just get back to your life and forget about her entirely…” She trails off like she’s unsure of how to finish that sentence, but she doesn’t need to.

Dani realizes quite suddenly how big of an idiot she’s been about this whole thing.

“Dani, you are in _love_ with that girl,” Rebecca says, and the words sink like stones into Dani’s hammering heart. “You were having a panic attack just asking me if she was okay earlier because you love her so much. Why can’t it be that simple?”

There’s something in her chest that’s been tightening since she woke up to the empty bed that morning. Something that’s been stretching and pulling and _aching_ , and it finally, finally snaps inside of her.

“She’s my best friend in the world and she deserves to be with someone who sounds like she could _die_ from loving her so much,” Rebecca is saying, but she might as well be talking to a wall, because, in her head, Dani is already on her way out the door, finding her Lyft and directing him to the manor instead of to the train station—on her _way_. “I just don’t want either of you to—”

Before she can finish, Dani gets to her feet so quickly that she knocks her almost-full suitcase onto the ground, spilling its neatly folded contents on the ground. As noisy as it is, it cuts Rebecca off spectacularly, making her fall silent as Dani shoves her feet into her boots and starts for the door, barely stopping to grab the keys before she’s out the door.

“Dani, are you—” Rebecca begins.

“I have to go talk to Jamie,” Dani tells her, not skipping a beat. “Right now.”

In that hollow that had been dug out of her chest, something light is beginning to blossom, to unfurl. _Fuck_ her flight. _Fuck_ leaving. _Fuck anything_ that isn’t seeing Jamie’s face as soon as she possibly can. She’ll walk all the way there in the freezing cold without a coat if she has to just so she can see her and kiss her and tell her how sorry she is. Tell her that she loves her.

“You do?” Rebecca asks, audibly smiling. “Go on then. Don’t let me stop you.”

There’s a car waiting for her down in the parking lot and Dani’s eyes find it almost immediately after stepping out the door. She rushes over to it, phone pressed to her ear, and she says, “Thank you, Rebecca. Really,” as she slides into the back of the car.

“You’re welcome. Now _go_.”

So Dani hangs up and does.

_________

“You have to hold it together longer than that if you really want it to stick.”

“I’ve been holding it here for almost five minutes.”

“Hardly.”

“Well, it feels like it. How is this worth all the effort that goes into it? Gingerbread isn’t even that good.”

From where he’s leaned forward, one hand braced against the table, Owen rolls his eyes so hard that Jamie is surprised when it doesn’t knock him off balance. He’s making the face of a petulant child, mouth twisted into an angry frown, and has been since she started complaining twenty minutes prior. He’s being such a sourpuss that it’s almost impossible to have any fun with the activity, but she supposes it’s at least a bit better than how Flora is acting, which is basically just an impression of a gremlin from _Gremlins_ , sugared-up and excitable and doing laps around the kitchen table where the half-finished gingerbread house is resting.

The other two are much calmer. Hannah takes criticism from Owen on her decorating skills with a stiff upper lip and a few clarifying questions to make sure the adjustments she’s making are on the right track. Miles is mostly staring down at their reference sketch of the manor’s layout and relaying needed information about room placement and general structure.

The most frustrating thing is that Owen keeps switching between taking this project too seriously and giving Jamie significant looks that she doesn’t have it within her to begin to translate. It’s the same one he’d given her on the couch earlier and the same one he’d given her when he practically forced her into participating in this whole make-the-manor-in-gingerbread-form thing. As if all of the heartbreak and loss she’s feeling over Dani is capable of being funneled into such an inane activity.

At the thought of Dani—the look in her eyes the night before, spread bare and open and pliant on the mattress beneath Jamie’s body—her hands press the two pieces of gingerbread she’s been frosting together too hard and they crumble to pieces.

“Shit,” she mumbles, releasing the broken pieces from her hands to inspect the damage. It doesn’t take an expert to know that there’s no way of fixing it.

“Oh, my god,” Owen says. “You _oaf_.”

Jamie throws him a look. “ _Oaf_?” she repeats, scoffing. “What an insulting and antiquated thing to say to me.”

“Yes, _oaf_ ,” Owen says again. “But I’d also accept ruffian, barbarian, and _villain._ ”

She can’t help the little laugh that bubbles past her lips. “Villain? Seriously?”

“If I’d known you were so _crumby_ at this, I wouldn’t have had you join us.”

From across the table, Hannah groans. Miles grins. Flora eats another gumdrop from the bowl beside the unused slabs of gingerbread. 

Jamie shakes her head. “No.”

“But I guess bakers can’t be choosers.”

“Are you certain _you’re_ not actually the villain of the piece?”

“If I am, then bake me into custardy.” 

He’s grinning now, all hints of exaggerated frustration wiped from his expression. Affection flares in Jamie’s chest and she can feel her heart as it bounces up into her throat, making the next words difficult to say with any snark. “I hate you.”

But she doesn’t. She loves him. It’s a strange thing to let herself really consider because she hadn’t been able to do that before Dani swept into her life and loved her into dropping the walls she’s been hiding behind for as long as she can remember. She knows what love feels like now—without a doubt, without a _question_ —and it’s a different sort but she feels it when she looks at Miles and Flora. When Hannah smiles at her, easy and kind and so ready to prop her up when Jamie can’t stand on her own. When she thinks about Rebecca, a world away, and that teasing grin she’d given her on that FaceTime call just days before.

And she feels it when she looks at Owen, standing there with a goofy smile on his handsome face, trying to coax her back into wholeness with baked goods and bad puns.

Owen clutches a hand over his chest, right above his heart, and pretends to be broken up by what she’s said. “Hey,” he says, his lower lip wobbling pathetically, “I may not be a pastry, but I still have _fillings_.”

Before any of them can respond to that, the doorbell chime rings, loud and jarring and making them all jump. Miles and Flora stop fighting over the last candy cane and look toward the door to the kitchen as if expecting the mysterious visitor to appear right there. Owen even looks over, but it’s Hannah who says, “Let me just go get that,” and drifts from the room, to the hallway and then into the front hall.

Jamie watches her go until she disappears around the corner and then turns back to Owen. “You have to stop,” she tells him.

“Oh, yeah?” he asks. “And if I don’t?”

“Then I can’t be held responsible for my actions.”

His eyes light up and she’s groaning before he can even get the next pun out, pressing her palm to her forehead and looking away. “Oh,” he says, “I _cannoli_ imagine.”

“Owen,” Jamie begins, half-word, half-sigh, but before she can finish whatever she’s about to say, a voice rings out from behind her and everything goes still.

“Jamie?”

It’s Hannah, speaking softly in a tone that Jamie doesn’t think she’s ever heard her use before as she stands in the doorway, one hand resting against the doorjamb like she needs to in order to stay steady.

“Yeah?” Jamie asks.

“You...You have a visitor, love.”

Jamie frowns, puzzled. “A visitor?”

Hannah nods in answer and steps to the side of the doorway, leaving enough room for Jamie to pass by. On her way, Jamie throws a look back at Owen and sees her own befuddlement resting plainly on his face. 

She makes her way down the hallway slowly, like she’s heading to her doom or something, trying to guess at who it is waiting for her. The answer, it turns out, is the last person she’s expecting somehow.

Dani. Standing wild-eyed and winded in the middle of the room, a panting, out-of-breath mess of blonde hair and flushed cheeks from the cold outside and Jamie doesn’t know what to do.

Jamie comes to a halt where she’s standing, just inside the front hall. “Wha—Dani? What are you—?” she begins, hating the way her voice cracks, but she doesn’t get to finish. 

“I couldn’t do it,” Dani says breathlessly. “I couldn’t just leave.”

Oh. 

Jamie crosses her arms over her stomach, caught as she always is beneath Dani’s gaze. She looks away, trying to figure out what to do with that. _Yes_ , she wants to say. _Yes,_ she could. _Yes_ , she has to. Because her life is in another country, another world, and Jamie’s is—

“Y-you...” she trails off, unable to finish, but it’s as if the other woman hasn’t even heard her to begin with.

“I couldn’t just _leave_ like that. Not when we’re—”

Whatever she’s about to say never comes out. She’s interrupted, instead, by Flora’s voice ringing out from behind Jamie.

“Dani! You’re here! You came back!”

She rushes into the room and makes a beeline for Dani. Jamie watches her throw herself into Dani’s arms and then Miles comes trailing after his sister.

“This is a surprise,” he says, going in for a hug of his own. 

Dani smiles at each of them in turn, looking happy to see them but also a little annoyed at the direction everything has decided to go. She looks back up at Jamie once she’s released from the children’s embraces—probably to get things back on track—but, before she can, she’s practically tackled to the ground by Owen who comes, seemingly, out of nowhere.

“You came back,” he says, voice muffled and he sounds suspiciously close to tears.

Dani shoots Jamie a confused look over his shoulder, but she just shakes her head.

“Um, yeah,” Dani says, patting him awkwardly on the back.

He pulls away from her, still clutching at her upper arms and says something that Jamie can’t quite hear. Whatever it is makes Dani smile, and her eyes flick over to meet Jamie’s before she says, “Yeah, that’s...that’s kinda why I’m here.”

Owen turns and looks at Jamie, still tear-eyed and gives her a sad smile until Hannah comes up from beside Jamie and grabs his arm.

“Alright, love,” she says, as she begins to tug him away toward the kitchen. “Miles and Flora, why don’t we go finish the gingerbread house?”

Easily-distracted, the children agree and trot after her obediently, disappearing into the hallway and back into the kitchen.

And then it’s just Jamie and Dani.

“Jamie, I—”

“Why are you here, Dani?”

Her voice ends up sounding far harsher than she initially intends it to, but she needs to know. She needs to know why Dani is standing in front of her instead of getting on a plane after _everything_. Why she’s looking at Jamie like that. She needs to know if she came to—

“I had to see you again,” Dani says honestly and Jamie can’t maintain eye contact when she looks like that—so pleading and caring and hopeful.

“You’re going to miss your flight,” Jamie says. “You have to go _home_. You have to—”

But Dani doesn’t even try to calm her down. She just shakes her head, this dopey smile on her face that makes Jamie’s heart flutter the tiniest bit. “No,” she says. “I _don’t_ have to.”

Jamie frowns. “What are you—?”

“I’m in love with you.”

For a second, Jamie is certain she’s heard her wrong. Of all the ways she’d expected this day to go, she’d never once dared to imagine _this_. Her head is swimming, and her ears are ringing, a lump in her throat when she tries to swallow.

But, no. She heard her right. Dani is staring at her with wide, terrified eyes, just waiting for Jamie to say something and she knows exactly how that feels because she felt the same way the night before, sitting in her car and knowing it was the end of _this_. Them. That it had to be.

Except—

“Dani, you don’t have to…” She takes a deep breath, steeling herself for the next part. “If you’re only saying this to...try and _fix_ this, or...because you’re _leaving,_ then—”

— _please just put me out of my misery._

Dani practically lurches forward, reaching out a hand as if she’s going to try and touch Jamie, but thinks better of it at the last second and drops it. “No!” she says. “No, Jamie, I’m not...I wouldn’t just... _say_ that because I don’t like how things ended. I wouldn’t say it at all if I didn’t—”

“Girls!” Owen calls, and Jamie turns to see him peeking out from the hallway. “Flora’s insisting on _eating_ the house soon and I wanted to know if you’d like us to save you any before—”

“Hey, Owen, buddy?” Dani says and he smiles, turning his attention to her. “Can you maybe just...give us a minute? And...go away?”

His expression turns sheepish. “Right. Sorry. Um...carry on.” He ducks his head back around, leaving them alone again.

“Jamie,” Dani says softly. “Jamie, please look at me.”

Jamie does, but slowly, trying to remember how to breathe, certain that, at any moment, she’s going to wake up on the couch again or in her flat. Alone.

Dani takes a step forward, but doesn’t touch her. She just stands there, hands clenched at her sides like she has to actively _not_ touch her. She takes a deep breath, blinks, and then carries on. “I’m in love with you, Jay,” she says. “I am so... _gone_ over you. And I know we haven’t known each other that long and I know it probably sounds crazy, but it’s the truth. So...screw the _math_ on this. Seven days, seven months, seven _seconds_ and I think I’d still be in love with you.”

Jamie chuckles, wetly, already crying but Dani smiles at the sight of her, shaking her head in disbelief.

“You’re...the best person I’ve ever met and I was so worried about how fast it was going that I...But I don’t care about how long it’s been, you’re the only thing I think about. You have been since you showed up at your own doorway at one in the morning, drunk and asking for your phone charger.” Jamie laughs again and Dani takes it as a good sign, reaches out and grabs her hand, clutching it in both of her own. “I know how cheesy it sounds—and I _know_ how cheesy saying it sounds cheesy sounds—but I can’t help feeling like I’ve done this before. Loved you, I mean. And that really scares me because I’ve never felt this way about anyone or anything, but...I can’t just go home and forget this. Go back to my life like I didn’t just meet the love of my life in the last place I expected to. And I’m sorry that I made you feel like I could.”

Shaking her head, Jamie squeezes Dani’s hand. “You didn’t—”

“I did,” Dani cuts in, squeezing back. “I did and I’m really sorry about that, but I want this. I want _you_ . I wanna spend all my time with you and steal the covers from you in the middle of the night.” She’s crying now and Jamie can hardly see her from her own tears. “I want everything we’ve had this last week, but I don’t want to act like we’re on borrowed time anymore. And I know I have to go back eventually, I _know_ that, but I still…”

She doesn’t finish that thought because she doesn’t need to. They stand there, looking at each other, holding hands and crying and Dani’s expression begins to deflate the longer the silence goes on for. But Jamie can’t think of a thing to say because this is the last thing she expected to ever have a chance at and she has no idea where to start.

“I love you, Jamie,” Dani says, quiet and sure. “That’s why I couldn’t leave.”

And the realization of that—of Dani missing her flight and choosing to _stay,_ at least for a little while longer—is just so—

Jamie shakes her head, crying and laughing and probably looking absolutely mental, but she can’t stop. “You couldn’t—” she starts, but the words splutter and die out and Dani is looking even more worried by the second. “Dani, I— _Jesus_ , just—” And she uses her free hand to wrap around the back of Dani’s neck, tugging her in and kissing her.

Dani makes this noise against her lips that sounds like a tiny sob of relief and then her arms wrap around Jamie’s waist, pulling her close and kissing her back until Jamie is dizzy for an entirely different reason.

“I _knew_ it!” Flora shouts from somewhere nearby and Jamie thinks she can hear the scattered excitement of the others, but she doesn’t really care and she doesn’t pull away to check.

She just tugs Dani closer and kisses her harder.

_________

“So…” Owen drawls when they finally join the others in the kitchen, holding hands and smiling, throwing each other happy looks every two seconds and Dani still can’t really _breathe_ right, but that’s okay. “Just another ordinary day, huh?”

“Oh, yeah,” Jamie drawls, sitting in an empty chair at the table. She tugs sharply at Dani’s hips until she falls back with a small _oof_ onto her lap, throwing her arms around Jamie’s neck to catch herself. “Nice and boring. Not life-changing at all.” As she says this, her eyes meet Dani’s again and she’s so close and warm and her hands are on Dani’s hips and she just can’t—

“You’re going to be gross now, aren’t you?” Miles asks and Dani turns to look at him, sitting across the table beside his sister. He doesn’t look annoyed in the slightest. Instead, he’s happily munching on a large piece of gingerbread and looking between the two of them with a look that Dani thinks might be delight.

Jamie pulls Dani a little closer and rests her chin on her shoulder. “Oh, you betcha’.”

“Are you staying then?” Flora asks, hope tinting the edges of the question.

Dani nods. “Yeah, I think I’ll stick around for a little while longer,” she jokes, and then laughs when Jamie lightly pinches her thigh.

Hannah, who’s sitting at the head of the table directly beside them, reaches out a hand and Dani takes it. “I’m so happy for you two,” she says and, somehow, Dani feels impossibly lighter when she pulls her hand away again.

“Let me just say that I’ve been rooting for you the entire time,” Owen chimes in. 

“Dani, would you like a piece of my bedroom?” 

As she says it, Flora reaches out a hand holding what looks like a gingerbread wall with icing decorated to look like a window. Dani laughs in Jamie’s lap. 

“I would love one,” she says and takes it.

The buzz of normal conversation picks back up around them and Dani leans back into Jamie’s chest as she nibbles at the treat Flora’s just shared. She laces their fingers together at her waist and Jamie kisses the back of her neck. She looks around at the others, everyone laughing and talking and eating like it’s Christmas. Like they’re _family_. Like they love each other.

They do.

And Jamie knows now that she’s allowed to feel the same way.

“I love you,” she whispers into Dani’s ear and Dani closes her eyes, takes a deep breath.

“I love you, too,” she says and Jamie pulls her closer.

_________

Later, Jamie wraps her arms around Dani as tight as she can as Dani struggles to unlock the front door of her apartment. Once it’s open, she goes to pull away and step inside, but can’t manage it and has to, instead, shuffle in with Jamie still wrapped around her, both of them laughing as they go.

“Gonna give a girl some breathing room?” she asks.

Jamie shakes her head, pressing her lips to the dip below Dani’s ear as Dani sets the keys on the table by the door. “Nope,” she says. “I fully intend to spend the rest of the time you’re here pressed into you like this.” She kicks the door shut behind them.

Dani hums, closing her eyes as Jamie begins to trail her lips up and down her neck. “You won’t hear me complaining.”

“Yeah?” Jamie husks in her ear. “Good to know.”

Dani spins in her arms and leans forward, resting her forehead against Jamie’s as they sway together. “Kiss me,” she mumbles, reaching up to wind her fingers into the soft tresses of Jamie’s hair, bringing her in closer.

Jamie comes obediently, kissing Dani with soft and careful lips, letting Dani kiss her back before she opens her mouth and presses her tongue against the seam of Dani’s lips. Dani parts them, letting her in, and Jamie flicks it against the roof of her mouth before meeting Dani’s own. Sweet. _Perfect_. 

It’s different than any of the kisses they’ve shared before, and it’s not that the hunger isn’t still there—it’s just that they can do this now. Not just because they have more time, but because they both know they’re _here_. On the same page. All in.

“I’m such an idiot,” Jamie says when they pull apart. At the look of panic in Dani’s eyes, she’s quick to continue, her gaze soft as she cups Dani’s cheek and strokes her thumb over the bow of her lips. “How did I ever think I could let you go?”

Dani laughs. “The same way I did, too,” she answers. “Maybe we’re both idiots.”

“At least the company’s good.”

Dani kisses her again, nibbling at Jamie’s bottom lip with the flat of her teeth. They’re walking backwards now, moving so achingly _slow_ so they don’t trip, heading towards the bedroom. As they go, Jamie’s fingers tug up the hem of Dani’s sweater, stopping just long enough to break the kiss and tug it over her head. 

Another kiss. Closer to the bedroom. 

Dani works steadily on the buttons of Jamie’s shirt, revealing the skin beneath bit-by-bit, inch-by-inch. She manages to get it off and then Jamie is working on the button of her jeans. 

“How long can I have you for?” she asks, and desire is so evident in her voice that Dani’s breath hitches.

 _As long as you want_ , she wants to say, but doesn’t because, as amazing as this victory has been, there will come a time when they have to part. At least physically. But there’s strength in knowing this, and in knowing that, even when they do, nothing will change between them. And it won’t be forever. Dani will set the life she’s built in Ohio _ablaze_ to guarantee it if she has to.

“School starts back up on the sixth,” Dani says, licking and kissing and biting up Jamie’s neck to her jaw. 

“So,” Jamie whispers, “another week.”

“Yes,” Dani agrees, pulling back enough that she can meet Jamie’s eyes. “But even after that. We’ll figure it out. There’s time.”

And there is, isn’t there? Jamie seems just as caught by this as Dani feels. Her gaze softens and the corners of her lips lift a little.

“There’s time,” she agrees and then they’re kissing again, a little more desperately.

Somehow, they make it into the bedroom and then Jamie nearly trips on something and breaks her neck. Pulling back, she looks down to find Dani’s clothes and suitcase scattered on the floor by her bed.

“Poppins, what—?” she begins, but Dani just shakes her head and kisses her again.

“I was in a hurry,” she explains quickly, not caring to elaborate. “Later, okay?”

And, yeah, Jamie doesn’t have any problem with that. They fall back down on the mattress together, so desperate to touch and kiss and rediscover that they barely manage to get their clothes off all the way before Jamie is pressing Dani down with her hips, with her body, hands exploring eagerly.

“I’m scared I’m going to mess this up,” she whispers, pressing her open lips hot over Dani’s pulse point as she does.

Dani combs her fingers through Jamie’s hair and bucks up against the pressure of her body. “You’ve done a pretty good job every other time,” she sighs, too desperate for the joke to land the right way. “I have faith in you.”

“No.” Jamie pulls back a bit and Dani opens her eyes to look at her, at the serious set of her brow and the way her lips are pressed into a line. “I’ve never...I’ve never _been_ with anyone like this and now I’m with you and I love you and I’m so terrified that you’re going to realize this was a mistake or that you want more than just me and—”

“Hey,” Dani breathes, cupping Jamie’s face with both hands. “This is new for me, too. But I love you and it doesn’t have to be hard, okay?” Jamie kisses her. “We’re going to figure this out together and I am not going anywhere. Not in any way that counts.”

“Promise?” Jamie shifts her weight to her left arm and presses a kiss to Dani’s forehead, her eyelids, her cheeks.

“Promise,” Dani whispers.

“Okay.” Jamie nods. “Okay.” 

With that, she dips her head and moves down Dani’s body to run her tongue down her sternum, one of her hands sliding up inside Dani’s thigh to press against her, but not _enough_. Dani gasps, holding her breath, and tries her best to not ust grind into the other woman, but it’s getting harder and harder by the second as Jamie’s mouth moves lower and lower.

Slim fingers slip underneath the line of her panties, just barely touching her.

“ _Jay_ —” Dani’s back arches and she can’t keep the note of agony from her voice. “Can you please just—”

And Jamie’s never really been one to take orders. If anything, she goes out of her way to _defy_ them as much as she possibly can. Hell, she’s practically made a living out of it. But Dani is so wet and she can see it on the inside of her thighs and there’s this _swoop_ in her stomach that almost knocks her over at the sight, so she thinks that—just this once—she can make an exception.

_________

There is peace for a while. Solitude. The week passes in a blur of quiet moments spent tangled together in bed, walking around the village together, holding hands at dinner and kissing in the still of Jamie’s living room as the TV plays on in muted silence.

Rebecca doesn’t come home right away either, but she does call the morning after Dani’s missed flight and question Jamie on everything, asks her to put Dani on the phone and gives her what Jamie assumes to be “The Talk.” It’s the stiff set of Dani’s shoulders that give her away, the way she nods and nods without speaking, like Rebecca is throwing as much information at her as possible to prove that she’s serious. 

It’s the way she says, “I know. I will. I promise,” and kisses Jamie long and deep once they hang up. The whispers of _I love you_ that linger on the soft of Jamie’s skin for hours afterward, keeping her warm and certain even as the clock ticks on.

There are gushing text messages from Rebecca about Edmund, this mysterious man that’s made her stay in Ohio a little longer, who Jamie is secretly so grateful for—without him, Dani might never have come to Bly at _all_. Jamie is happy for her, she really is. And for the first time in her life, she has someone to gush about as well, discovering a new facet of her friendship with Rebecca that she never expected to be able to take advantage of.

There are promises said in the dead of night, when her and Dani stay up late talking about the future, about _them_ and what it will mean when Dani inevitably has to go home. With anyone else, Jamie is certain she wouldn’t ever believe that things could really be the way they talk about, but she’s never trusted anyone the way she trusts Dani. There is something about her that makes Jamie believe every word she says.

It’s a new feeling.

And so Jamie knows long before she’s standing in the airport what it is she’s signing up for.

Dani clings to her arm as they check her luggage in, as they make their way to the security line and it strikes Jamie as slightly comical how much has changed since the last time she was standing in the same place. 

“Text me, okay?” Jamie asks, not even caring how desperate it might sound.

In the two weeks that she’s known Dani, she’s come to terms with the way she misses her when they’re only a few inches apart. It’s a constant ache that hasn’t exactly alleviated since Dani decided to stay, decided to _try_. But it has become less of a concern, less of a thing to be scared of and she feels brave even as she faces the next however-long without the woman she loves at her side.

This is the best part about being in love, she thinks: the knowledge that, even once Dani steps through the line and out of sight, she won’t be _gone_ . She’ll just be... _away_.

“Nonstop,” Dani agrees, nodding seriously and pressing her fingertips into Jamie’s shoulder blades, holding her close. “Obsessively.”

Jamie laughs and says, “Good. Me too.”

Dani’s eyes are shimmering with unshed tears and Jamie knows that hers likely look the same. “I’ll FaceTime you once I’m home, okay? Once it’s a reasonable hour.”

“Even if it’s not,” Jamie says. “Wake me up if you have to. I’ll want to see you. Make sure you’re okay.”

“As okay as I can be,” Dani reminds her and Jamie nods. Understands immediately.

“As okay as _we_ can be,” she agrees.

“There.”

Tucking some of Dani’s blonde hair behind her ear, Jamie frowns. “What?”

“Not home,” Dani says. “There. I’ll FaceTime you once I’m _there_.”

And, oh.

Jamie nods. “Okay,” she says. “Once you’re there.”

Dani’s jaw is clenched tight and she’s breathing a little harshly out of her nose. “Okay,” she repeats.

“Okay.”

“I should go.”

“Probably.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Jamie?”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t want to.”

Jamie feels the bite of tears in her eyes, feels the shake of her hands as she grips tighter to Dani’s hips. “I don’t want you to either.”

Dani makes a small, broken noise, her chin wobbling just the tiniest bit. “Jamie?” she says again. Her fingers comb through Jamie’s hair desperately, like she’s trying to memorize exactly how it feels against her skin.

“Yeah?” Jamie says again.

“I think I forgot my purple sweater at your place.”

“I can send it to you.”

“No, I—” Dani shakes her head. “Keep it. I…” She stops to swallow thickly. “I want you to have it.”

Jamie slips her hands beneath Dani’s shirt and flattens them against the dip of her spine. They are so far from alone, but saying goodbye to the person you love should be allowed its simple luxuries; Dani leans in and kisses Jamie, cupping her cheek and deepening it, the salt of her tears dripping into it, lips shaking with the tremble of her jaw as she pulls back. Jamie wonders, vaguely, how this might look to a passer-by, to the other people in the airport. If they look as desperate as they feel, as terrified and unsure and already so lonely.

“Here,” Jamie mumbles when she pulls away. She shrugs her coat off and hands it to Dani, who takes it with a look of curious confusion, before unzipping her jacket and taking that off, too. “Take this,” she says and drapes it over Dani’s shoulders, taking her coat back and sliding it on again over her t-shirt. “That way we’re even.”

Dani doesn’t even pretend to protest. She just slips her arms into the sleeves and nods sadly. “Thank you,” she whispers and Jamie cups the back of her head to pull her in, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

And, though Jamie wants to express the same sentiment—wants to fall to her knees, wrap her arms around Dani’s legs, and _beg_ her to stay—she forces herself to be brave. To say, “You can,” then, “ _We_ can,” and then, finally, “We’ll figure it out.”

Dani blinks, pale and slight. “Okay,” she says. “We’ll figure it out.”

“I’ll call you every day.”

“Okay.”

“And it won’t be forever.”

This, apparently, is what it takes to get Dani to stop crying. To nod seriously. “No. It won’t be,” she says.

This is: the truth, the way they love one another, exactly what it _should be_ and—

Something Jamie can handle. Something they both can.

“I should go,” Dani says again, but there’s more conviction to it this time. 

“Yeah.” Jamie nods. “Okay.”

Before she does: Jamie leans in and kisses her again, harder this time, eyes closed and thinking—like a prayer, like the tide, sure and steady— _we can do this, we can we can we can_.

She doesn’t have the words to express how lucky she feels, even seconds away from being alone again, because she won’t really be alone. 

She kisses Dani and opens her eyes to the pale, blue sky in Dani’s and she is certain that she has never seen anything so beautiful.

“I love you,” she says, wiping at Dani’s now chapstick-stained lips.

“I love you, too,” Dani says right back. Just like that.

And there’s really nothing else to say.

Jamie stands in the same place where she stood to watch Rebecca go and stares at Dani’s back, looking her over again and again and trying to sear the sight into her memory. Just before she reaches one of the security agents, Dani turns to find Jamie watching her and gives her this lovely smile that knocks Jamie’s breath out of her chest. She lifts a hand, curling her fingers to sign _I love you_ and Jamie laughs through her tears somehow.

Lifts her own hand and signs it back. Follows it up by holding up two fingers.

Dani swipes at her cheeks with the sleeve of Jamie’s sweater, smiling despite it all, waiting until the last possible second before turning around.

In her truck, after, Jamie sits with her hands on the steering wheel, staring at the wall of the parking garage and trying to keep from breaking down into tears again. She has just long enough to wonder if this is the wrong call—if they’re both making a huge mistake—before her phone buzzes.

It’s Dani.

A selfie of her sitting in front of a window, planes parked on the airport apron visible through the window behind her. She’s frowning exaggeratedly, lips pursed in a pout that Jamie desperately wishes she could kiss away. 

_Is it pathetic that I miss you already?_ the message reads.

And Jamie laughs despite herself. Blinks away her tears and types back a response as quickly as she ever has.

 _Absolutely not,_ she types, _Already planning to dress Owen up in your clothes and force him into a cuddle_ . _Promise you won’t be jealous?_

 _Never_ , Dani writes back. _I’ll have his head._

It seems like a miracle: the ability to laugh and smile and joke even when heading into darkness.

 _I love you,_ Jamie writes.

She watches as the read receipt pops up beneath it and then stares at the bubbles indicating that Dani is typing until another message comes through.

 _I love you too_ , it says, and that’s enough, isn’t it?

Jamie thinks that’s enough for her.

_________

It takes less than two seconds for Jamie to answer, for the screen of Dani’s phone to be filled with the sight of the woman she loves, bedraggled and looking for all the world like she’s spent every moment since Dani left being restless and unsure.

“Hey,” Jamie says, voice rough with sleep. 

Dani sits down on the edge of her bed in a home that has her name on the lease but doesn’t feel like it belongs to her. Not anymore. “Hey,” she says. “Made it alive.”

Jamie grins. “That’s a relief.”

She remembers: that last night pressed together, the tickling brush of Jamie’s hair on her neck, body curled around her as she always was after and drifting away.

She remembers: _will you come back_ and the way it melted in hot breath on the hinge of her jaw; _yes i will of course i will_ with a kiss to Jamie’s finger-ruined hair, a deep breath pulled from that place between sleep and awake; _i don’t want to be without you_ and those arms tightening their hold around her body.

And then: _you won’t be_.

What she wants to say now: _i hate this, i love you, i don’t want to be here without you, be_ **_anywhere_ ** _without you, i love you i love you i love you._

“I miss you,” she says instead of those things because it means the same thing. 

Couldn’t possibly mean anything else.

Immediately, no hesitation, Jamie says, “I miss you, too,”and Dani thinks, rather suddenly, _I can do this_.

She can.

_________

“Stop laughing.”

“It’s hilarious.”

“You have a very lame sense of humor, Becs.”

“I mean...here you were worried she was an axe-murderer and it turns out she’s the love of your life.”

“Shut _up_.”

“Did she axe you?”

“What the hell would that even mean?”

“You know what it means.”

Jamie rolls her eyes and crosses her arms, leaning back against the wall of Rebecca’s bedroom as she watches her friend unpack. “You’re gross,” she says. “And, anyway, you went and shacked up with her almost-fiance. How is that better?”

Rebecca looks up from the drawer she has open, looking a little embarrassed. “We didn’t... _shack up_.”

Jamie hums. “That’s not what I heard.”

It’s Rebecca’s turn to look exasperated. “If I’d known you getting a girlfriend would make you this annoying, I would have done something to stop this from happening.”

“Like you could have,” Jamie jokes. “I’m irresistible.”

Rather than argue, Rebecca crosses the room in a couple strides and pinches Jamie’s cheeks, shaking her head back and forth as she does. “You sure are,” she coos and then presses a chaste kiss to Jamie’s nose, laughing when Jamie shoves her away. 

“I hate you.”

“You love me.”

Jamie narrows her eyes. “I do not,” she says, even though she _does_ —she does, she does, she _does_ and she knows that now, lets herself _feel_ this love she has for her best friend in every part of herself.

“Not as much as you love your axe-murdering girlfriend maybe…” She trails off and drifts back over to her suitcase, flung open on the bed. “How are you feeling, by the way?” she asks, her expression turning serious for the first time since she flung her arms around Jamie in a hug as she stepped into the manor to her own cheeky welcoming committee. “With the whole...long distance thing?”

And the weirdest part is this: somehow, Jamie really is fine. They’ve texted and talked on the phone and Jamie has yet to take off Dani’s sweater. Things are okay. 

Really, they are.

“I feel good,” she says honestly and Rebecca clearly isn’t expecting this.

She blinks in surprise, looking at Jamie like she’s certain it can’t really be her. Jamie tries to remember if she’s ever said this exact phrase to anyone before, and comes to the realization that she doesn’t think she _has_ , but—

There’s a first time for everything.

“Yeah?” Rebecca asks.

Jamie nods. “Yeah.”

“Huh.” Rebecca looks at her proudly for a long moment. “Look at you.”

_________

For all her faults, Dani’s mother is surprisingly tight-lipped about the whole situation. It’s clear from the moment Dani tells her—three days after she returns to the states—what’s going on that she doesn’t actually think it will last very long. 

But then a funny thing happens: it _does_.

And suddenly, it can’t be ignored anymore.

“So when do I get to meet her?” Karen Clayton asks one afternoon in March, sitting across from her daughter at a restaurant, one-and-a-half sangrias deep and still waiting for their brunch to arrive.

Dani chokes on a sip of water. “What?” she asks. “Who?”

Karen gives her a _look_ , but it’s different than any of the ones that Dani is used to having turned her way. It’s not disappointed or disbelieving or expectant. It seems regretful, repentant. 

_Sorry_.

“This girlfriend of yours,” she says. “Jamie.”

The name sounds weird coming out of her mother’s mouth and Dani shifts a little in her seat. “You,” she begins, but has to swallow around the word before continuing. “You want to meet her?”

Karen nods. “I would like to meet the woman my daughter is dating, yes.”

“Oh.”

A well-timed sip of sangria. A quirked eyebrow. Even when extending the olive branch, Karen can’t wash her attitude of all its cynicism. “Is that a problem?”

“No,” Dani rushes to say. “No, of course not. I just...I’ll have to see when she’s free so we can...video call or something.”

“Let me know,” Karen says and Dani spends the rest of brunch trying to wrap her head around the exchange. 

In her car in the parking lot of the restaurant after, she texts Jamie to tell her about it and barely a minute passes before the response comes.

 _Meeting the mom, huh_ ? it reads. _That’ll be a first._

And despite the aching worry in her chest about the whole thing, Dani can’t help but laugh, can’t help but feel lighter about the whole thing.

Jamie, she learns continually, has a knack for making things better.

_________

“Jamie, is it?” Karen asks and Jamie nods, her legs feeling numb like she’s actually sitting across from Dani and her mother instead of just watching them on her laptop screen.

“Yes, ma’am,” she answers, eyes shifting over to Dani, who is looking increasingly uncomfortable at Karen’s side.

They’re seated at a table in a house Jamie knows is not Dani’s own. Behind them is a bookshelf with framed school pictures of Dani at various ages peppered about. Jamie tries her very best not to let them distract her.

“Karen is fine,” Karen says. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

And her smile looks genuine enough.

“Bad things?” Jamie jokes and Karen laughs, looking more charmed by the second.

“I’m not actually sure my daughter is capable of saying a word against you.”

Dani averts her gaze nervously and mumbles a quiet, “ _Mom_.”

Jamie laughs now, too, and the tension drains away into something else. “Yeah?” she asks, and Karen nods. “Well, I know what that’s like.”

When Dani looks up, Jamie winks at her and, just like that, everything feels that much easier.

_________

“I’m sorry,” Karen says when the call ends some time later and Dani is so unused to hearing that phrase that she, for a moment, is certain she’s hallucinated the whole thing. “She’s lovely.”

Something like a bird’s swings flutters in Dani’s chest, relief ballooning in her veins. “Really?” she asks, unable to keep the hope from her voice.

“Really.” Karen reaches out and thumbs at her daughter’s chin. “I’m happy for you, baby.”

And Dani isn’t sure what to say to that. But she _does_ know what to do when her mother opens her arms:

She falls into them and hugs her tight.

_________

Time passes. Somehow, they get by.

 **Poppins [1:43]** _It’s way too early for cat gifs._

The message comes after a GIF of a tired cat falling asleep while sitting up. Jamie laughs and wipes her sweaty forehead with the back of her hand. She leans back on her knees where she’s crouched by the rose bushes to type back.

_It’s never too early for cat gifs._

**Poppins [1:44]** _Maybe not for those of us who live five hours in the future._

 **Poppins [1:44]** _How is the future, by the way? Is today a good day?_

Just seconds after the message appears, Jamie gets a notification from Snapchat. It’s a selfie of Dani, sitting up in bed with her hair sticking up oddly. The filter used has put a crown of flowers around her head and Jamie doesn’t even hesitate before screenshotting it.

 _The future is good_ , Jamie types back after she makes the new picture her lock screen wallpaper. _And today is a great day._

Over 6,000 kilometers away, Dani types back, _I had a feeling it would be_ , and Jamie can’t stop smiling for a long time after that.

_________

There are bad days, too. Days when it’s hard for Dani to even get out of bed because of the aching in her chest. Because of the way Jamie’s voice sounds on the phone and the memory of her touch fading and fading with every day they’re apart.

Dani throws herself into her work, into repairing her relationship with Eddie, into doing _anything_ but sitting around at home, missing her girlfriend and, for a while, it works. It’s nice, at least, to have her friend back, especially given his murky relationship status with Rebecca. There are nights when they simply sit around moping together, leaning on one another and the ever-constant presence of their phones in their hands to get by.

But there are other times when Dani _has_ to be alone because she is convinced that _no one_ gets it. And part of her feels terrible for it, but things with Rebecca and Eddie are slower and _different_. Some of her friends that are in serious relationships, who claim to have been through something similar, try to offer their advice, but Dani is never quick to take it. 

There are days when absolutely _everything_ makes her think about Jamie—her skin and her eyes and the shape of her mouth when she smiles. Sometimes she’ll just sit in her bed or on her couch, wrapped tightly in Jamie’s hoodie, and imagine that the warmth of the fabric is Jamie’s arms instead, holding her close.

Being in love really is a funny thing. She finds herself closing her eyes when they talk on the phone sometimes, listening to Jamie move around and make dinner or clean her apartment with her eyes closed. Picturing her. The most normal things in the world make her feel fit to burst—imagining Jamie standing and staring into the refrigerator, trying to decide what to eat; changing her sheets or folding laundry; toweling her hair after getting out of the shower. 

Silly things.

She’s never missed the _shape_ of someone before.

More than once in a while, Dani lets her hands wander as she listens to Jamie talk about mundane things like growing seasons or planting cycles. She’ll bite her lip to keep quiet as her fingers slip between her own legs so that Jamie won’t stop, won’t falter, will just _keep talking_.

There are other things, too.

They have webcam sex for the first time with _disastrous_ results—meaning that Rebecca just _lets_ herself into Jamie’s apartment just as Jamie is coming to the sound of Dani talking her through it. Her head is tipped back against her pillows, one hand pressed over her mouth, and Dani is just unbuttoning her own jeans as she sits there at her kitchen table, eyes fixed on the way Jami’s arm is moving, fucking herself just off camera, when she hears a surprised yelp.

The next thing she knows, Jamie is cussing and sitting up so quickly that she knocks her head on her headboard, slamming her laptop shut and making Dani’s screen go dark. When she calls just a half-hour later, they very pointedly do _not_ talk about it and Rebecca—who texts at least once a week to check in with Dani—goes silent for almost a month.

Jamie is certain to use the chain on her door every time after that and they get better at it. _Efficient,_ even.

It’s not easy. Sometimes, Dani is convinced that it’s the hardest thing she’s ever had to do, but she lives on the idea that it won’t be forever. So much so that, by the time summer rolls around, she’s actively looking to make that idea a reality.

_________

They spend their six month anniversary on FaceTime, going until late at night for Jamie and into early evening for Dani before they even begin to entertain the idea of hanging up. And it feels like such a monumental thing—loving someone for so long without ever wanting out; with only wanting _more_ , as much as Dani will _give her_ —that Jamie sort of wants to cry when Owen offers to cook her dinner for the whole thing, when Rebecca hugs her so tightly that Jamie can’t really _breathe_ , when Hannah gets teary-eyed and proud, looking at Jamie like she’s simultaneously her child and her little sister.

It’s like being suffocated with love in the absolute best way.

Owen must send Dani the recipe for the meal because she’s eating the exact same thing when the call starts. They laugh and smile and tell stories and express how much they miss one another by the flickering glow of the candlelight and Jamie can’t, at any point, figure out how she got so lucky.

“I’m sorry,” Dani says eventually, Jamie’s beautiful, bright-eyed beacon of light, “I wish I could have been there for today.”

She says it in a light voice, but Jamie can hear the hint of panic that resides below the words—the fear that there’s animosity or anger on Jamie’s side at their being apart. And it’s not that she’s _wrong_ , it’s that none of that frustration has ever once been turned to anything but circumstance. Jamie is certain she couldn’t be truly angry with Dani even if she tried.

“Me too,” Jamie says honestly, taking a sip of red wine from her glass to keep from bursting into tears. “But there’s always next time.”

Dani laughs, the sound broken a bit by what Jamie assumes are unshed tears. “Next time?” she asks.

“Isn’t the one-year anniversary a bigger deal than six months?” Jamie asks, and she’s not exactly directing the question at Dani because Dani, like her, hasn’t ever been in a serious relationship before. Not in any way that truly counted. This is uncharted territory for both of them, and they’ve spent these last months stumbling through the unknown with nothing but one another’s hands to hold onto.

 _But_ , Jamie thinks, _there are worse things._

“Supposedly,” Dani agrees, like she has any idea, any point of reference other than hear-say. “But this feels pretty special to me.”

This is what it’s like to love someone: to be constantly aware of having them, of the idea that you could _lose_ them; to revel in the _having_ as much as possible without mourning the _what-if_ ’s.

Even as she takes in the sight of her girlfriend, a world away and teary-eyed—so far that it is a physical _ache_ —Jamie can’t help but think _what if what if what if_.

But: “It feels special to me too.”

And: “A big fucking deal.”

Dani cracks a grin. “A big fucking deal,” she agrees.

 _Six months_ , Jamie thinks next. A long time to feel like half of her is missing. It hasn’t gotten easier. If anything, it’s only gotten harder the longer this whole thing goes on. There are days when she is certain that she’s made a terrible mistake in falling in love with a woman from another world entirely. But, then: she hadn’t exactly had a choice, had she?

Not loving Dani would be far more miserable than loving her ever could be.

Phone calls and text messages and long hours spent on FaceTime will never, _ever_ be able to make up for the real thing, but it is a small price to pay to have Dani in her life. To have Dani _love her back_.

And, besides—

“What’s six more months?” she asks.

“Nothing,” says Dani, this breathtaking woman that Jamie loves more than she has ever loved _anything_ else. “Nothing against us.”

Jamie quite agrees.

_________

Dani thinks that, were the person she was last December to meet the person she is now, she wouldn’t recognize herself. It’s only a few days after their six month anniversary that Dani realizes that she’s been separating her life into two halves: pre-Jamie and post-Jamie.

Before and after.

The old her, the timid version who’d never had anything to really _try_ for wouldn’t know what to do with this new self. The self that is actually aware and confident. Who knows her worth by more than just titles and petty accomplishments. Who knows it by the love of someone else and, importantly, by _herself_. 

And it’s not really that Jamie has _changed_ her. It’s just that the real her—the one hidden behind all those other masks she’s been wearing—is comfortable coming out. In knowing herself.

Even Eddie notices the difference.

“I’m not sorry, you know,” he says one day when they’re standing in the concession stand line at the movie theater. 

“For what?” Dani asks.

“For being a complete idiot and proposing to you.”

It’s said so nonchalantly, so flip, that Dani chokes on a laugh. Eddie pats her on the back as she catches her breath.

“Why’s that?” she asks once she can manage it and Eddie just grins—this silly smile she’s known for her entire life, it feels like.

“If I hadn’t, you never would have fled the country to get away from me,” he explains. “And you never would have met Jamie.”

The person at the front of the line pays for their popcorn and the line shifts forward. 

“I did _not_ flee the country,” Dani tells him. Eddie makes a face at her and holds up his hand, forefinger and thumb held apart by just a tiny bit and Dani bumps him with her shoulder, making him laugh. “Okay, maybe I did.”

“You did,” Eddie confirms. “But, hey...you met the love of your life. So I’m not going to apologize.”

Dani hums, considering this. She loops her arm through his and leans into him a bit. “Fine,” she says. “I’ll allow it. But I’m not going to apologize for fleeing. If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have met _Rebecca_.”

She says it in her most obnoxious sing-song voice, just to make Eddie blush and avert his gaze. In the months since Christmas, he’s stayed in frequent contact with Rebecca, though they’ve never once labelled it the same way Jamie and Dani have. That isn’t to say, though, that Eddie’s been even _remotely_ interested in anyone else.

And, as far as Dani knows from what Jamie’s told her, Rebecca is much the same.

“This isn’t about me,” Eddie says. “Let me be happy for you.”

“You’re happy for me?” Dani teases and Eddie laughs. “How happy?”

“What?”

“Like…’buy our concessions’ happy?” she asks and the eye roll Eddie gives her is the same one he’s been giving her since they were six-years-old. 

“Fine,” he agrees. “Yes. I’ll buy them.”

Dani squeezes his arm. “Yay,” she cheers softly and, later, when they’re sitting in their seats, it feels like a miracle.

Because Eddie lifts his paper cup full of soda and bumps it against her own, saying, “To the happy couple,” in this cheesy way that makes her feel giddy and young and so _lucky_ she can hardly stand it.

She thinks of Jamie, in her apartment and curled into her blankets, fast asleep. Imagines crawling into the bed beside her and remembers the phone interview she’d had just that morning. That call from Henry, unexpected but welcome.

 _Happy_ , she thinks.

A strange feeling. She’s still trying to figure out what to do with it.

_________

“So what does that mean?” 

Jamie sits down heavily on the bench in the greenhouse and runs a hand through her hair. “Well,” she says, “she’s gonna be going to London so she’s closer to the office. And Henry’s going to have to find another governess.”

“Oh, wow,” Dani says, and her voice sounds strange. The emotion behind the words feels a little stiff. “That’s crazy.”

The muggy, July heat presses down against Jamie through her clothes, making her want to crawl out of her own skin. The shock of information she’s received over the last few hours has done little to make her feel calm, and there’s nothing quite like quietly panicking in the hot summer sun.

“Yeah,” she says, at a loss for much else.

“How do you feel about that?”

Jamie sighs and turns her face so she can wipe some of the sweat away with the sleeve of her shirt. “I don’t know,” she admits. “I’m happy for Rebecca, obviously. She _took_ the job with the children because Henry said he’d consider her for this. But it’s going to be strange without her here.”

The thought of it is almost too much to handle. Jamie knows that she’d survived at Bly without Rebecca for nearly a year before she was hired, but she can’t even fathom how it will be once she’s gone. Flora and Miles are already agonizing over it, too, and the idea of bringing another stranger into their midst definitely doesn’t help anything.

“Yeah, I understand that,” Dani says, and she _does_ sound sympathetic, but there’s something else there, too. Some other emotion Jamie doesn’t understand. “But you’ll still see her, won’t you? She’ll come to visit all the time, I’m sure. And, you never know. You might really like the person that replaces her.”

“Maybe,” Jamie says. “I won’t hold my breath.”

And, for reasons she can’t possibly imagine, Dani laughs like it’s the first joke anyone has ever told her.

_________

Danielle Clayton makes the second biggest decision of her entire life five months before her twenty-sixth Christmas.

The first, she knows, will always belong to that rash one she made seven months ago when she decided to leave the country for a week. Since then, she’s been taking life one day at a time, never bothering to plan too far ahead for anything other than this:

Getting back to Jamie.

It seems unreal that it’s been so long since she’s seen her in person—since they’ve been able to hold one another and kiss and _exist_ in the same place. The initial plan had been to spend the last month of her summer at Bly, and, although the specifics of this haven’t changed, the general situation certainly has.

For one of the first times in her life, her mother is on her side and it's surreal to think about how their relationship has changed in so little time. She has someone else in her corner now. She has _Eddie_ back. Most importantly, she has Jamie.

So Dani buys out her lease and sends out her belongings with the money Henry sent her for relocation. She goes to a goodbye dinner with some of her colleagues and cries when she hugs her mom and Eddie at the airport. But she doesn’t let it stop her. Doesn’t let it change her mind, because all of the headache and the heartache of leaving the life she’s known for so long behind her is worth it for one reason, if for nothing else:

At the other end of all this frustration waits her most important person, and Dani wouldn’t forfeit that for anything.

_________

Owen has been grinning all day. Jamie can’t figure it out. It’s not that he’s usually frowning, no. In general, he’s a fairly jovial person, especially since he and Hannah got together. Sometimes, his upbeat spirit is downright _insufferable_. But it’s never been like this before.

The worst part is that he won’t tell her _why_. 

Whenever she asks him, he just hums this little tune and acts like he hasn’t heard her, which is completely ridiculous for a lot of reasons. One of them is that the third time she asks him, she is standing directly beside him and practically shouting at him.

She tries Hannah, but there’s no loyalty there. At least, not in the same way that Hannah is loyal to the offending party. 

The children are just as bad, but it’s hard for her to really get a read on them because they keep fleeing whatever room they’re in every time she comes in to question them. Even when they’re all sitting together in the kitchen for lunch, no one breaks. They eat in silence, Jamie glaring at everyone in turn and the others pointedly _not looking at her_. 

She texts Rebecca about it beneath the table, halfway through her sandwich, and gets a simple, _Hm. Strange_ , and nothing else. Which is either code for _you’re imagining it_ , _I’m too busy to talk right now_ , or _I know and I won’t tell you for the same reasons they won’t._

To make matters worse, Dani is radio silent for the entire day. Jamie gets a good night text around eleven o’clock the night before, but nothing else in response to her own morning greeting. The handful of other messages she’s sent, worriedly, have also gone ignored. 

She’s considering the plausibility of having slipped into another dimension where everything is the same except that no one likes her when she catches Flora staring at her. Staring at her and smiling in that adorable, gap-toothed way she does as Jamie rinses her plate off in the sink.

“Okay,” Jamie says, turning the water off and crossing her arms. “What is going on, kid? Seriously?”

Owen, who is wiping down the table, lifts his head and Jamie catches what she thinks might be a stern look being shot Flora’s way. Flora catches it, and then looks back at Jamie. “Um. Nothing,” she says. “You’ll find out soon!” Another stern look and Miles sees it this time, too. 

He grabs his sister by the wrist and pulls her from the room, muttering something about “ruining it” and Jamie watches them go.

Apparently, for all the growing up the last half-year has forced her to do, Jamie is still not above storming out of the house. She spends the next few hours taking out her frustrations on the weeds growing in the garden, and then on the lawn with the lawn mower. 

It’s hot outside and miserable and she has no success whatsoever in turning her mind off. So much of her work involves muscle memory, things that she’s done so often that she could do them in her sleep, that it’s no use even trying to bury herself in it. Eventually, she leaves her phone in the greenhouse to keep from checking it obsessively for any sign of life from Dani’s end. Tells herself that she must be busy and not to worry and throws herself at any tiny bit of work she can. Anything to distract her.

The day is just beginning to cool down, evening approaching rapidly, when Jamie holes herself up in the stifling greenhouse to fret over some of her more needy plants. She’s inspecting the stems of a particularly sorry looking foxglove when she hears footsteps behind coming up the walk. There’s a knock on the glass of the door and then it opens and Jamie frowns.

“Bit busy here,” she says to whoever it is, hoping they’ll take it as a sign to _go away_.

She’s too frustrated to want to talk to anyone. Too angry with everyone except—

“Sorry. I was just wondering I could grab my phone charger real quick,” a voice belonging to an angel says and the whole world narrows down to the seconds between one breath and the next—that shivering moment when Jamie _realizes_.

It’s Dani. 

Dani is standing in the door of the greenhouse, smiling and waiting and looking like every dream Jamie’s ever had—every fantasy she’s ever entertained—parcelled into four limbs and a face that’s been burned into the black of Jamie’s eyelids for as long as she cares to remember.

She has one palm rested flat against the doorway of the greenhouse, leaning onto it for stability, for _something,_ and they stare at each other and it’s been _months_. Months of distance and long phone calls and lonely nights. Jamie feels frozen, stuck in time, and she can’t quite shake it.

“You’re here,” she hears herself whisper.

“I am,” says Dani. “Now, about that phone charger—”

“Shut _up_ ,” Jamie says and she can move again. She _does_ move again, she trips on her own feet because she’s in such a hurry and then she’s throwing herself into Dani’s arms, squeezing her arms around her, making sure she’s _real_. 

Dani melts against her, letting out a little laugh that almost sounds like a sob, and Jamie knows she’s crying before she even pulls back and gets a look at Dani through the tears. She reaches her hands up and cups Dani’s face, brushing the pad of her thumb over her eyebrow, over the delicate skin below her left eye, against the dip of her smile and then Jamie leans forward and pulls her into a furious kiss. Dani doesn’t hesitate to kiss her right back.

“You’re real, aren’t you?” Jamie whispers, desperate for reassurance. “I’m not imagining this?”

“I’m real,” Dani says. “I’m here.” Another kiss. Jamie moans into it and presses her feverish body to the soft warmth of Dani’s own, not caring how sweaty she is—not caring about anything but the way Dani feels against her. The fact that _Dani is here_.

“You’re here.” Jamie kisses her and kisses her and kisses her. “You’re here.”

Dani laughs against her mouth, pulling her so close that Jamie can’t breathe, but it doesn’t matter. It’s not like she could really breathe anyway. “I’m here to _stay_ ,” she says, and she has to pull away in order to manage it.

Jamie blinks. Her mouth feels dry very suddenly. “What?” she asks, certain she’s heard that wrong.

Another laugh. Dani brushes her fingers through Jamie’s hair, dotting kisses across her forehead and cheeks and nose. “I’m replacing Rebecca,” she says, simple and easy. “I’m _here_ , Jay. I’m not going anywhere this time.”

Jamie stares at her because she can’t possibly—

But then: _blinks_.

“You’re... _You’re_ Rebecca’s replacement?” she asks, her voice thin and fragile, waiting for something to dash her hope into the rocks of the stormy sea.

“I am.” 

Dani smiles like the sun. Jamie lets it blind her.

She sucks in a breath, letting those words wash over her again and again until she can start to believe they’re real. She kisses Dani again while she waits, unable to care about anything but the way Dani kisses her back, the way she touches her, the fact that she’s really _there_ and also:

“I love you,” Jamie whispers into Dani’s mouth. “I love you so much. You’re here.”

“I’m here,” Dani gasps back, her fingers curling into Jamie’s hair. “I love you, love you, _love_ you.”

_________

It isn’t until they make it back to the house to find Henry, Rebecca and the others waiting—a big banner reading _WELCOME BACK_ hung over the stairs—that it starts to feel real. Jamie is flushed from the excitement, from the way Dani’s tongue flicked into her mouth over and over as they wrapped around one another in the greenhouse, as she looks around at these people—all these people that she loves and loves and loves.

Rebecca wraps her in a hug and whispers, “I’m sorry for not telling you,” against Jamie’s hair, but Jamie shakes her head. Forgives her without thinking about it because it doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing else matters.

Flora and Miles are like Jamie’s never seen them, eager and excitedly chattering with Dani, asking her all sorts of questions. As they do, Flora alternates between hanging off Dani and hanging off Rebecca, feeling too much to rein herself in. 

Even Henry is smiling free and easy for once. Owen—the bastard—still won’t stop grinning, but Jamie can’t even bring herself to be annoyed anymore.

She’s too busy wrapping her arms around Dani, keeping one hand on her at all times to keep her from slipping away. Softly, she cards her fingers through Dani’s hair and presses kisses to her shoulder and cheek whenever there’s a lull in the enthusiastic conversation. 

Dani is happy and calm and Jamie can’t bring herself to look away for too long. She never could.

Things are different. They won’t be the same again and Jamie knows that, yes, but she doesn’t know _how_.

Doesn’t know that living with Dani will come as easily as breathing. That Karen will send them house-warming gifts and save Jamie’s number in her phone as _Daughter #2_. Doesn’t know that Edmund will come to visit in the fall—that he and Rebecca will be almost as sickening as Jamie assumes she and Dani are; that he’ll start talking about job interviews and asking Dani about the logistics of moving. 

She doesn’t know that, in just a few months, they’ll be at Henry’s Christmas Eve party and Dani will cut in on a dance Jamie is having with Flora, offering a hand to her. Ask if she feels like taking a walk and Jamie will agree because she’ll do anything to be by Dani’s side. Dani will lead them out into the cold to the greenhouse, where a present will be waiting on the counter there. A small thing and Dani will fall serious for a moment—so serious that Jamie will ask what’s wrong—and Dani will tell her to open it.

So Jamie will. She’ll open it and inside will be a small, velvet box that gives the whole thing away even before she turns to find Dani dropped to one knee before her. And Dani will have a lot of words planned to say, but, in the moment, all that will come out will be:

 _Hey, Jamie...Wanna marry me_?

And Jamie will cover her mouth with her hand as she finally understands—as a million memories of moments spent with the woman kneeling in front of her rush through her like a tidal wave. She’ll cry and gasp out a half-angry.

 _Of course I do, you prat_.

Dani will jump to her feet and slide the ring onto Jamie’s finger—reveal a similar ring of her own that she will have slipped onto her own hand at some point. Jamie will tug her in, kiss her hard and long in the cold winter air and it’ll be wet and silly, both of them crying and laughing too much to kiss properly. 

When they get back to the party, almost everyone will be waiting quietly for their return—even people they don’t _know_ —and, when they finally arrive, a rush of excitement will pass over them. Flora will launch herself into Jamie’s arms and Hannah will cry while Owen keeps his arm around her waist. Henry will clap Dani on the shoulder proudly while Rebecca hugs each of them in turn, pretending she’s not crying. Even Miles won’t be able to stop smiling.

It will be perfect. Easy. Jamie’s eyes will find Dani’s and, when they reach one another again, everything will finally slide entirely into place.

And Jamie is someone who grew up hating promises and fairy tales. Hating love stories and magic. But none of that will matter anymore.

It already doesn’t.

All of that is waiting just around the corner.

But, for now, Jamie just holds Dani closer and lets herself breathe.

..

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for joining me! 
> 
> happy new year, guys!
> 
> (also worth mentioning: there is a nod to one of my favorite quotes from Superstore early on in this chapter, so kudos if you catch it. if you don’t and you’re wondering why i bothered to include this note, carry on)

**Author's Note:**

> the title is from "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (and the Judy Garland one is the only valid version—no point in arguing, i'm right and you're wrong; them's the facts).
> 
> chapter titles are named after songs from “The Holiday” soundtrack.
> 
> happy happy holidays!
> 
> [here’s a christmas monstrosity for your displeasure if you’d like.](https://housewithoutwindows.tumblr.com/post/638540061109092353/okay-i-havent-finished-my-christmas-fic-yet-so)
> 
> come bother me on [tumblr](https://andawaywego.tumblr.com/) as well. i get lonely.


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